THE University of Guyana has a new Vice-Chancellor in Professor Lawrence Carrington who has taken over the reigns of power at our tertiary institution indicating his intention to make sweeping changes which in his words, ” makes this premier education facility a modern entity” One of the changes put forward by the professor is to have the University of Guyana attached to the University of the West Indies on certain programmes. While I welcome changes to my alma mater I am gravely concerned about the motives of this “new broom” and I make this statement with the backdrop of what took place with the Law programme of our University.

The University of Guyana’s Law programme was considered substandard and as such the University of the West Indies stepped in “to help” this sister institution. We are all well aware of what took place thereafter, the Legal Education Board of the Caribbean was set up and U.G’s Law programme is now subjected to the dictates of the U.W.I, suffice it to say that the students of this substandard University are always at the top of the class at the Trinidad-based institution. Therefore there must have been something not substandard with U.G that brings these kinds of results year after year and definitely not a substandard issue the UWI had with UG, there was an ulterior motive of the UWI. So I am very wary of anyone who rides into town with lofty ideas, speaking in condescending language in a quest to help U.G. It is my opinion that they may be up to no good and could mean quite the opposite to what they are saying.

Let me tell you a true story that took place here in St Lucia. A student came to the Mathematics teacher for him to work out a mathematical problem (that teacher is a University of Guyana Diploma graduate) the teacher did just that whereupon the completion of the exercise promptly threw the scrap into the bin. As he was about to leave the general area, something caught his eye, a fellow Maths teacher, a University of the West Indies graduate was seen rummaging in the bin for that scrap work sheet. We later determined that a UWI teacher was the reason behind the student approaching the UG graduate for a solution to the problem.

There are countless stories involving UG graduates and those of UWI, in many other disciplines that space in this column would not afford me and for this cause , I believe that UG has created an envy with its counterpart institution and this envy has reached epidemic proportion to the extent that self preservation on their part would cause them to seek the demise of UG.

Graduates of the University of Guyana has shown the world over that we have what it takes in academia, thanks to our training at UG.

We are not financially endowed as others, which is the main bugbear to development at UG, but we will get there.

However, I will not sit idly by and allow our university to be beaten into subservience by an institution or by its agents whose intentions are to hinder and not to help.
NEIL ADAMS