Guyana’s bold push towards free tertiary education by 2025

The government of Guyana has commenced key steps in implementing its ambitious agenda to make tertiary education free by 2025. The brightest feature in this endeavour has been the write-off of student debt initiative already providing relief for many.

As part of this effort, the Ministry of Finance has written off about $203.7 million in student debt owed to the University of Guyana, benefitting 346 individuals.

Included in an overall plan for support to 13,000 Guyanese, this relief will be extended to 2,900 persons, by end of the year, are part of an initiative regarding the write-off of student debt. Student debt write-off constitutes a salient plank of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic 2020-2025 manifesto, guaranteeing free tertiary education by 2025.

President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali said that to this extent, he has set a stage plan to help students with outstanding university loans in the early stages, and the recent 2024 national budget, by Senior Minister Dr Ashni Singh, assures the funding to launch the first phase of this plan.

The first phase would help clear the government of $11 billion loans that students have accumulated and relieve the fiscal burden further on students and their families.

Speaking as regards to university loans, Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo said that there were talks to see how the system could be looked at to support some who had already repaid back to the university but were still servicing commercial bank loans.

This holistic approach thus reflects the commitment of the government towards ensuring all students access higher education without saddling them with long-term loan servicing.

The government did not just stop there; to further open up access to education, the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) was introduced. This project provides persons the opportunity to pursue tertiary studies at no cost.

As of today, the nation has invested more than $1.6 billion dollars in scholarships through GOAL. As of May 2024, over 4,000 students graduated with bachelors, masters, postgraduate diplomas, and other related titles.

Furthermore, this year, 8,023 more GOAL scholarships were issued during the first half of the year, to be coursed through learning sessions to start on September 2024.

These initiatives, therefore, testify to the continued efforts of the government to remove financial barriers and provide access to post-secondary education for all Guyanese.

Such an approach will enable the government to equip citizens with appropriate skills and knowledge required to make meaningful contributions to the development of this country.

With plans put in motion, Guyana will be clearly on its way to attaining free tertiary education by 2025 with the future generations able to go about their academic goals without the burden of debt.