The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus will once again host the Mona Academic Conference from Friday August 27 to Sunday August 29 coinciding with the start of the 2004/2005 academic year. This year’s conference is being held under the theme “Revisiting Tertiary & Higher Education Policy in Jamaica: Towards Personal Gain or Public Good?”. Sponsored by the Office of the Principal, it is being organised by the Alister McIntyre Research and Policy Group, a joint project of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) and the Mona School of Business (MSB) UWI, Mona.
Chair of the planning committee and Alister McIntyre Research Fellow at the MSB, Ms Rheima Holding says the conference is timely as it follows the completion of a study entitled ″A Proposal for a National Tertiary Education System for Jamaica” carried out through the Alister McIntyre Research and Policy Group. Ms. Holding, who is also Director of the Tertiary Education Project at UWI, Mona, notes that the proposal was circulated to a Working Group which includes members of the private sector and heads of tertiary institutions and orgsnizations, other stakeholders and the Minister of Education, Youth and Culture, the Honourable Maxine Henry-Wilson. She explains that the decision was made that the proposal ‘should be given wide national exposure and benefit from a variety of perspectives. It was therefore decided that UWI’s Mona Academic Conference 2004 would be the ideal forum in which to engage the Jamaican community in a dialogue about the future of higher education in Jamaica’. For additional information on the conference visit the conference website at http://www.mona.uwi.edu/conferences/2004/monaconf