The record also shows that it is an unmitigated disaster, and a monument to human folly.
While no definitive accounting has been made concerning the amount of money Bahamians have pumped into the nation's educational system, there is widespread agreement that the figure would run into the thousands of millions of dollars over the course of the past three decades and half, inclusive of the tens of millions in the loan scheme.
Successive Bahamian governments have given education and health pride of place in their budgetary allocations. Indeed, if there is any one item linking the current government and its opposition in parliament, it would be their agreement on the necessity of pumping money into education and training. They have obviously agreed that effective schooling is one of the keys towards capacity building.
In addition to this noble dimension of the question concerning education and training, it is a fact of political life that one of the surest routes to the voters' heart is to offer them any number of 'freebies', inclusive of bursaries, scholarships and other grants. Falling squarely in this category of political instruments is the troubled Government Loan Guarantee Scheme.ﾠ
Reports coming in suggest that this ill-conceived scheme is causing no end of grief for the government, the Ministry of Education, scholarship recipients and their guarantors.ﾠ To make a long story short, the program has all of the earmarks of a national calamity.ﾠ We were sceptical from the very beginning about this scheme, noting that it was clearly designed to curry favour with voters.ﾠ What is interesting about this matter is that when it was proposed, a somnolent opposition nodded its approval.
Today, having awakened to the reality that this scheme is a major boondoggle, the current Minister of Education and his team are working overtime to cobble together some stratagem that might assist them in staving off utter disaster.ﾠ With more and more delinquencies and more and more students reneging on their side of the deal, the government has contracted the services of collection agents and is also threatening legal action. The problem with this get-tough attitude on the part of government, is that it is fraught with any number of hard choices.ﾠ
Granted the 'political' nature of this scheme, the attentive observer is left to wonder if the government has the courage to get tough with the people with whom they were playing those political games.ﾠ At this juncture, only time will tell whether any good will come of the many appeals being made for people to pay what they owe.
We believe that many of the people who signed up for the so-called scholarships did so with little or no intention of paying back.ﾠ And to put the matter as bluntly as possible, many of them – we are convinced – were only interested in a 'rip-off'. The long and short of the matter, then, is that the Government of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas should – as a matter of the most urgent priority – cut its losses, by radically restructuring the loan guarantee scheme.ﾠ
Indeed, such a radical re-engineering of the scheme should involve factoring into the equation a reconsideration of all educational priorities. There is, according to one perspective, a view which suggests that public provision for education and schooling should be focused on primary and secondary level students, with the emphasis being placed on seeing to it that the nation's human resources are nurtured and cultivated where they count most.ﾠ The core contention in this approach to education, training and capacity building is that if public provision is focused on infants and adolescents, these cohorts would be healthier and better educated.
Contrariwise, the argument goes that tertiary level education should be funded privately, and that the government might assist in this effort.ﾠ Such an approach would have argued against any government backed loan guarantee scheme.ﾠ Even if we were to concede the argument and agree with the proposition that a caring government would not deprive people of limited means to a quality tertiary level education, we would still suggest that such assistance should have been directed at building up The College of The Bahamas and its ally the University of The West Indies.ﾠ
Today, since it is never too late to make amends for bad judgement and stupid decisions, Prime Minister the Hon. Perry G. Christie can and should call for a comprehensive review of the Loan Scheme and demand that the whole matter of tertiary level education and its funding be put on a rational basis.ﾠ If there are any lessons to be learned from the loan guarantee disaster, they must include the one which says that education is too important a matter to be left to politicians.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
