By Warren Bertram
Member of the Advocates Network, Professor Rosalea Hamilton, says the education sector needs overhauling to better prepare and retain students.
Professor Hamilton says while many tertiary students attain a number of exam passes at the secondary level, they often lack the critical thinking skills required at the university-level.
"We struggle as a university with the skill sets that young people bring to the university, having passed the required five, six CXCs, CAPE. They bring all these subjects but when it comes to thinking through the issues and, you know, writing and expressing themselves in terms of papers and so on, [there are] real deficiencies. And so... that's to say, if you don't have a solid base on which you're going to build these technical skills, you're in problems," she warned.
Professor Hamilton added that after earning a university degree, many graduates do not see readily available employment prospects in Jamaica and choose to migrate.
She said as more graduates leave the country, this affects the availability of skilled human resources needed for development.
"We have this huge migration, huge brain drain, so to speak, at least coming out of the universities directly. Fortunately, as a country, we get some of it back in remittances and so on. But in terms of the technical skills that's required to lead the innovative process that is critical to transform this balance of payments deficit that we continue to have for decades, what that means particularly is that we have to create competitive goods and services anchored on new technologies, new ideas, innovation to have a chance," she reasoned.
"It is when we do that, when we can export more, where we can earn the foreign dollars, we can bring down the debt and expand that pie that we can pay our teachers more and in turn pay our politicians [more]."
Professor Hamilton was a guest on Radio Jamaica's That's A Rap on Sunday. She was speaking against the background of the salary increases for politicians and the suggestion that these increases are meant to attract the brightest candidates to public service.
