Dear Editor,

I DO not want to be too anecdotal, but I feel constrained to rehash a little incident that still has me ruminating. It has to do with a call from an erstwhile headmaster, who dared me to find an event that can match the GOAL initiative. Guess what? I think I cannot.
First, let me say that I am one of the average Guyanese who really value education. To this end, I completed a fine undergraduate stint at the University of Guyana, and I am now engaged, concurrently, in two post graduate programmes, one at the University of the West Indies and the other from the York University in Canada. Both programmes are via the online mode and both are quite expensive. Now I am saying this because I want as many as possible to cash in on the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) initiative, compliments of our government.
This GOAL initiative, introduced by the government, aims to grant 20,000 online scholarships to Guyanese in the next five years. We are talking here, at least US$100 million, to the education sector, over the period of the scholarship granting. The Ministry of Public Service and the Ministry of Education have been tasked with the implementation of this unprecedented venture. I think this will ensure more efficiency in the rollout.

The next good thing to note is that the Nigerian-born professor, Jacob Opadeyi, is now in charge of GOAL. He is no stranger to things academic in Guyana, as he is a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana (UG). Although Nigerian by birth, he is a naturalised citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, and so he is of regional flair. His academic history is a strong one too, being at one time a Professor of Geomatics Engineering and Land Management with UWI. Jacob Opadeyi, in fact, did obtain his Executive MBA qualifications at the UWI, one of the universities involved in GOAL.  This of course brings a feeling of optimism in terms of the credibility of the institutions and what are being offered, namely UWI (University of Southern Caribbean (USC) -Trinidad), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) India, JAIN University India and University of Applied Sciences (IUBH) Germany.

Another big plus about this initiative is that many Guyanese, who are for from far-flung hinterland areas, will now get the opportunity to earn high-level qualifications without having to worry about travel and finance, and when all is said and done, there is no contract to honour.
Opadeyi himself explained that the scholarship awardees would not be bonded. “They would (only) be required to do community service stints of varying lengths, based on the respective programmes, before they graduate.” Time is just about up and I hope that Guyanese will ‘cash in’ on this life changing initiative.
A footnote is in order here. Lots of people have been asking why the universities of themselves did not select the potential students. The answer is most obvious. These universities would have only looked at the academic side of things, whereas, from a local perspective, the awardees will not be selected via academic merit alone, but in terms of needs and geography.

Yours truly,

Kamdeo Mohamed