~ Wants to partner with Govt ~

PHILIPSBURG--University of St. Martin (USM) is stepping up its campaign to enhance its service and bolster its enrolment figures, initiatives which President Josianne Fleming-Artsen said are crucial to the institution's sustainability.

The university currently has 244 students, down from the 254 it registered last semester.

Fleming-Artsen said the intention was to increase the student body to more than 300, and eventually even more.

To achieve its goal, USM, which marked its 20th anniversary late last year, wants to partner with Government to offer more scholarships to students. The university will also be working towards increasing its presence in schools, so that USM can be the tertiary institution of choice for students who are considering a college education.

"To increase student enrolment, we need to establish serious relationships with all the secondary schools," Fleming-Artsen told reporters at a press conference on Thursday. "We do have relationships with all the schools already, but we believe that we have to do much more work with them, and also with Government."

Fleming-Artsen said USM would like to see more students granted scholarships to pursue their first two years of studies at USM – a policy which she said had been put in place by the National Alliance (NA) government in the past. She said the sitting government had the will to assist USM, and noted that the institution wanted to partner with Government to execute this policy.

"If that policy were to be implemented, I believe we would immediately improve our numbers by 50 per cent," she said, adding that granting scholarships for students to study in St. Maarten was also a cost-saving measure.

"Government has been working with us in terms of subsidising us to a certain extent, but we need more students and we need a greater variety of programmes to offer our students, and we need Government's help where that is concerned.

"We are going into a new direction of country, and in going into that direction, I believe that we really have to look at the University of St. Martin and really see what type of university Country St. Maarten wants, since this is the only institution of higher learning that this island has. I think that, once we start working together, things will go right. There are many human resources needed for Country St. Maarten. USM should be the institution ... providing those resources."

She said USM had agreements with other universities abroad, which provided students with a broader scope of disciplines to choose from.

On the issue of enhancing service, Fleming-Artsen said the university was continuing to pursue accreditation, which she said was a "quality assurance" the institution wanted to offer its students.

"We are continuing to seek accreditation, and at the same time, we are ensuring that all our departments are up to par, that we offer new programmes and that we offer good-quality programmes. And by doing that, we must review all our programmes and make sure that they are of quality," she said, noting that this was an ongoing process for USM.