The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus is restructuring its operations to raise some $7.4 billion over the next five to seven years.
The country’s leading tertiary institution, which runs deficits of half a billion dollars annually, aims to turn around the situation and make half a billion per year to pay its bills and invest in developing the campus.
UWI Mona Principal Professor Densil Williams said the foundation has been laid for the transformational journey under UWI’s strategic plan for 2022 to 2027 dubbed “the revenue revolution”.
Speaking at the UWI Mona Council meeting on Friday, March 1, the principal said the business development office had been restructured to bring the business elements of the campus under one umbrella.
“We are estimating over the next five to seven years we should be able to generate net revenue of $7.4 billion as a campus”, he said. “We have a lot of current assets that we can make work for us so we want to restructure the receivables so we can get live cash into our business as well”.
Areas targeted to generate money in the short term include a review of the pricing of commercial operations on the campus to earn up to $1 billion; the retrofitting of 44 housing units in College Commons and the relocation of staff from externally rented properties to earn $100 million; and the doubling of earnings by Mona Health Services from $300 million to $600 million.
Long-term strategies to generate earnings include establishing Global Health offering training for health professionals for the global marketplace targeting $2 billion over the next five years.
Also included is the amalgamation of short-cycle courses which can be transferred into degree credits, targeting $500 million in net revenue.
Prof Williams also disclosed that UWI Mona is targeting knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) to earn $500 million per year focusing on high-value-added services such as legal, animation and accountancy.
“There has been a retrenchment from the traditional large call centres, and we’re seeing now boutique knowledge process services, so we’re looking at the high-value end of the business process outsourcing sector and we’re saying the resources we have are our students, who are among the best and the brightest”, the principal said.
Prof Williams said the revenue revolution would not impact tuition fees much in the short term, as self-financing fees would be increased by a maximum of three per cent in the next academic year.
Meanwhile, UWI Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hillary Beckles in his remarks observed that the reduction of funding to UWI Mona by Jamaican governments began 20 years ago, moving from 80 per cent of the funding, and was “now at 50 per cent and falling”.
