Government welcomes halt to UWI fee increase

The Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing (MTEST) has wel­comed a de­ci­sion by The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) to not in­crease tu­ition fees at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, the min­istry said the de­ci­sion was tak­en by the UWI Uni­ver­si­ty Coun­cil dur­ing a meet­ing held on May 8, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the out­come fol­lowed sus­tained en­gage­ment and di­rect rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the Gov­ern­ment through the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing re­gard­ing pro­posed tu­ition fee in­creas­es at the cam­pus.

MTEST said Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Sen­a­tor Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Prakash Per­sad, for­mal­ly ad­vised the cam­pus ad­min­is­tra­tion that the Gov­ern­ment did not sup­port any in­crease in tu­ition fees.

The re­lease added that Pro­fes­sor Per­sad al­so rec­om­mend­ed that no ad­just­ments be im­ple­ment­ed with­out the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­pressed sup­port.

Per­sad wel­comed the out­come and reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion re­mains ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able for stu­dents and fam­i­lies through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­mains con­scious of the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by many cit­i­zens and will con­tin­ue to ad­vance mea­sures aimed at pro­tect­ing ac­cess to high­er ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The min­istry ad­vised stu­dents, par­ents and stake­hold­ers that tu­ition fees at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus will re­main un­changed at this time.

MTEST added that it re­mains com­mit­ted to con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with UWI and oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure de­ci­sions con­cern­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion align with na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties and the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.