Undoubtedly a country's true development potential inheres in its people.

Natural resources help, but on their own, and in the long run, can end up meaning little. Indeed, pungent smells as we pass the red mud lake and Jamaica's passionately crusading environmentalist John Maxwell should have demonstrated, by now, that injudicious exploitation of natural resources can bequeath a toxic future.

Evidence of people as the true and fundamental resource abounds across the world such that it has become a view needing no robust defence.

Education therefore plays a rather important role in what a country can achieve. The Gleaner's editorial of April 3, 2009 expresses the opinion: "Prime Minister Bruce Golding is clearly on to something" as he speaks on "a planned overhaul of the criteria for lending by the Students' Loan Bureau".

The PM intends to give preferential treatment to student borrowers who wish to study in areas thought to be in 'national demand'.

The editorial suggests the PM is finally catching up with The Gleaner's view: "Mr Golding appears to be taking on-board something for which this newspaper has been campaigning: the use of public policy and state resources to drive educational outcomes into areas that will allow Jamaica to compete in a modern technological world. Our proposal, however, has been for the Govern-ment to leverage its direct subsidies to tertiary institutions to influence this process. For instance, at present, all Jamaican students at the tertiary level have 80 per cent of the economic cost of their education covered by the state - regardless of their areas of study."

The statistics

It speaks of a perverse outcome as with 80 per cent of Government's total subvention for tertiary education, the University of the West Indies (UWI) turns out 75 per cent of graduates in the humanities and a mere 28 Jamaicans - less than one per cent - in engineering.

Pure and applied sciences provide 319 graduates with five in agriculture - this from the statistics for 2007.

The argument here is that, for what the newspaper calls a 'modern technology-based economy', this set of proportions is inappropriate.

Several issues

Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

There are several issues to be dealt with here. First, by subsidising math and sciences based or 'technologically oriented' areas of study at the tertiary level one does not enlarge the pool of potential entrants to those disciplinary areas.

If indeed these skills are in short supply and the chosen solution is enhanced subsidy at the tertiary level, the effect would be to increase the future earning power of such graduates when, on a comparative basis, there would be no need to do so.

In other words, by reducing the cost to 'technologically oriented students', of investment in themselves - human capital - their future earned and retained income stream outstrips that of the humanities even more.

But the core problem originates at lower levels in the education system. They will not be addressed by a focus on cost subsidy to the tertiary-level student. Ideally, given all our circumstances - I know this will be disputed but this is an investment by society in itself, in its own sustainable existence - education should be delivered as a 'free good' as is done in Barbados and partially in Trinidad and Tobago.

Indeed, I was one of the students present when former Prime Minister Michael Manley announced free education at the UWI's Assembly Hall in the early 1970s. And there are many who to this day sing his praises for that decision. Problem is, we have never been able to generate and retain the surpluses, savings that would allow such a policy either to be effectively implemented or maintained.

Wide range of subsidies

As a result, education outcomes have suffered.

Government provides a wide range of subsidies to many sectors of the economy and society - some open and legitimate as in tax breaks for tourism and subsidised education, others opaque and criminal as in 'free' electricity to some inner- city housing areas as well as, in recent times, to some sophisticated commercial enterprises.

There is a need to look carefully at the subsidy issue generally and funding education in particular. I cannot but agree with the editorial's wishing "to see the idea developed some more and the policy outlines fully discussed before implementation."

For me, though, the first idea to develop must be funding earlier stages of the education enterprise while creating a set of measurable outcomes for, say, five- and 10-year periods. If subsidy emerges, it might be to entice good teachers to locate all across the island and to teach math, physics, etc, in labs that have been properly equipped.

It would make little sense to subsidise technical areas at the tertiary level in the hope that reduced loan- servicing costs will magically enhance the output of such graduates, even if indeed we could retain them within our shores. Remember the migration dilemma?

This matter, debated over the decades, really needs to have some, at least temporary, closure. And there is one important point that has to be highlighted: the functioning idea of a university is not created by merely the name 'university'.

The various MBAs and other degrees and qualifications almost randomly available in the country since deregulation are not all of the same breed. This we should know.

wilbe65@yahoo.com