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As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions strug­gle with grow­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and rapid ad­vances in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, says an over­haul of the sys­tem and deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion are nec­es­sary for sur­vival.

May will mark one year since he was sworn in as a min­is­ter and his re­turn to front­line pol­i­tics af­ter three decades. A found­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress mem­ber in 1989, Per­sad lat­er served as an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor un­der the late Bas­deo Pan­day be­fore re­turn­ing to acad­e­mia at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

While ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in this coun­try has be­come eas­i­er and more af­ford­able over the last two decades, the in­sti­tu­tions de­liv­er­ing it face sev­er­al chal­lenges. Per­sad sat down with me on The Big In­ter­view pro­gramme to dis­cuss such mat­ters last week. The in­ter­view will air on CNC3 in the com­ing weeks.