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From September 2019, all programmes offered by the University of T&T (UTT) will be available online.
This was disclosed yesterday by UTT president, Professor Sarim Al-Zubaidy.
In an apparent response to the T&T Guardian article which yesterday reported that the university will be shutting down some of its 13 campuses, Al-Zubaidy allayed any fears that the UTT was “shutting down.”
However, he admitted that the maintenance of some of the 13 campuses across the country was extremely high and some of them were being underutilised. As a result of this and as part of its cost-cutting initiatives, the said UTT has undertaken an ongoing campus rationalisation.
“Resulting from this exercise so far, the university has closed the UTT Campus at SAPA which had no programmes scheduled. The business facility, USTART, at Frederick Settlement was relocated to UTT O’Meara Campus. Both of these have resulted in cost savings for the university,” Al-Zubaidy said.
In moving forward, he said UTT will be better serving its students through blended and online learning.
“In this context, I have directed that all programmes be available online by September 2019. As you can imagine, this will take much effort and by September 2018, some of the programmes will be blended with online learning, for greater access by students,” Al-Zubaidy said.
“Again, let me state that UTT is here to stay and here to serve our students and UTT will continue to be an essential part of the tertiary education landscape of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean.”
Yesterday, the T&T Guardian reported exclusively that as part of its cost-cutting exercise UTT will be closing some of its 13 existing campuses as part of its massive restructuring exercise which started on May 11 with the retrenchment of over 50 academic staff. In line with this, the university will be giving up all campuses deemed surplus to its operations. It is suspected that the plan is to keep six teaching locations and that UTT will give up the Chaguanas (Agora) campus once the main campus in Tamana is opened. Agora, which is the only building owned by UTT, will either be rented or leased. It is also speculated that one of the Teachers’ Colleges—Valsayn or Corinth—will be closed and UTT O’Meara may be either sub-rented or given up altogether.