Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said during his visit to England that apart from the possibility of some enhanced investment or foreign direct investment, the other big issue is one of a bilateral nature and concerns the deepening of the relationship between St Vincent and the Grenadines and in particular the Community College and University of Wales, Trinity St David.
“The University and the Government of St Vincent and Grenadines have agreed that we should broaden the cooperation which we have at the moment. We are hopeful that we’ll get more scholarships, but there are other modalities which we can do there. We can articulate programmes from the University of Wales, Trinity St David here at the community college in the way we articulate for other places. We can also articulate up to a particular year and then go complete there”.
Gonsalves said there’s a very interesting set of initiatives at the University of Wales, Trinity St David, which the community college was seeking to roll out.
“It is what you may call in the literature micro-credentialing. For instance, if you have a degree like a degree at the University of Wales, you have 360 credits. You may do bite-size, micro size up to say 30 credits, you may do them in instalments of ten and for those credits, you can get a discrete credentialing could be in a technical area and those can be added within a particular period of time till it becomes reaches to the level of a degree or in our case if you want to do it to an associate degree or to a full degree because the community college has degree-granting powers by law”
“So it’s a question of your programs being accredited by the accreditation authority, which we also have a law on and accepted or accepted externally because there’s a difference clearly between accreditation and acceptance though they are linked, they are distinct”.
Gonsalves said he has already reported on this matter to the director of the community college, staff members and the technical persons.
