by insufficient investment capital but by a shortage of skills and professional mentality in the critical areas of the economy that are expected to super perform. Recognising that this is the age of innovation and knowledge-driven growth, it is reasonable to expect that the university sector, as a custodian of the knowledge content, should be at the centre of any and every growth paradigm. That is, this is the age in which the university sector is expected to lead the way or be a critical partner in the search for new and innovative economic sectors, and facilitating the transformation of old sectors. Indeed, this is largely correct since it is true that those economies in South East Asia, for example, that have attained impressive rates of sustained economic growth have done so on the basis of massive; but focused and scientifically modelled investments in the university sector that was restructured into alignment with the industry sector. Technology Parks were created to support industry- academic ecosystems in which professors and producers, teachers and technologists, came together to innovate on industry terrain. This is how Silicon Valley began, and China’s Technology Park in Suzhou operates. Operating in the neighbouring spaces served to normalise the relationship between research information and product investment. The alignment revolution that brought business and campus together for the national purpose also served to drive the enrolment upsurge because it pulled younger generations into the “making things” culture, and the “thinking things” systems.
Economic Growth: University Sector Can Do More Across the region, despite success in macroeconomic stabilisation, and efforts to mobilise significant national and foreign investments, the elusiveness of economic growth at the expected levels seem to defy standard explanations, and is therefore mysterious. A question raised is whether the university sector, beyond its teaching and research remit, can add greater value and constitute, in time, the yeast that will enable the cake to rise. There are features about the sector that require immediate recognition. In terms of building the human capital stock, the Caribbean has the lowest higher education enrolment in the hemisphere within the relevant age cohort, 18-30 years. At the moment we are hovering at less than 25% against a North America average of near 60% and Latin America approaching 45%. Within CARICOM, the Bahamas and Barbados lead the chart, with Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago bunched in the middle, and the Windward Islands at the base. The challenge here is that using any model of economic growth, the potential of a country for transformative and sustained economic growth is a function of the number of its citizens who have had higher education, professional development, and technical skills certification. The data for our region are not encouraging and would suggest that our countries are being held back on account of inadequate social capital. In other words it can be argued that Caribbean states are being held back not
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