MATRICULATION ADDRESS
PROFESSOR C.JUSTIN ROBINSON
The University of the West Indies, Five Islands Campus
Good afternoon, all. It gives me immense pleasure to give you a warm welcome to The UWI Five Islands campus, to all our matriculants, as we formally welcome you to The UWI Pelican family and our tradition of excellence. I want to thank you for choosing to pursue higher education and for entrusting us at The UWI Five Islands to take you on that journey. And as a campus, we commit to justifying that trust you've placed in us and to meet and exceed your expectations.
You are joining a fast-growing community. For the 2025 academic year, The UWI Five Islands Campus is welcoming a record number of 443 new students to our campus, and that's from a record pool of 750 applicants. If my math is still mathing, it means about 40% of the applicants didn't make it. So, congratulations to those of you who are matriculating. And again, I want to thank you for your interest in our programs and the confidence in us.
I want to especially welcome the 27 students from the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force who are pursuing our Criminology and Criminal Justice degree. They are doing so on a face-to-face basis, from the comfort of their home country, as part of our commitment as a campus to provide relevant programming in a flexible manner that meets people where they are.
Interestingly, as we welcome a record number of new students on October 11th, we will also graduate a record number of students, with approximately 200 graduating students to date, compared to 98 last academic year. So, the message there is, you know, we want you to get in and out. Again, we want to thank the Antiguan and Barbudan and Caribbean public for embracing this bold initiative of the Antiguan and Barbudan government and The UWI to bring a landed campus to the Eastern Caribbean.
As a campus, our enrolment currently stands at 1,323 students, up 21% from the same time last year. And as a campus, we look forward to our January intake taking us past the symbolic milestone of 1,500 students. Again, you are joining a rapidly growing community.
So, matriculants, you are here. Here. What are you here for? What do we expect, if not demand of you? And in fact, I would say what we require of you. I want to say that our region requires you to be the architects of a Caribbean transformation. Look around you. The person beside you needs to be the innovator who breaks our region's cycle of inequality, the entrepreneur who creates thousands of jobs for Caribbean youth, or the leader who finally unlocks the potential trapped in our islands for far too long.
You are not just students today. We require you to be that generation that will determine whether the Caribbean rises or remains trapped.
I'm going to be direct with you. I want to say to you that you are inheriting a Caribbean region in crisis. Not the headline-grabbing kind of crisis—hurricanes or pandemic—but something more insidious, really, a quiet crisis that is attacking our youth in particular.
Here are some facts you should be aware of: One in four Caribbean young people cannot find work. At least 25% of young persons across the Caribbean are unemployed, and not because they lack talent, because, as you know, we have more talent per square mile than Carnival Tuesday has glitter. But they can't find work because our economies are not generating enough jobs. We have growth, but growth with inequality.
The majority of our students and audience is female. And young women face an even starker reality, where the unemployment rate among young females is on average 30% or higher. And when they do find work, they earn 20% less than their male counterparts for identical work. This is your inheritance.
But here's the revolutionary thought: It doesn't have to be your legacy. We require you to become the solution. Every great transformation began with a generation refusing to accept the status quo. And as Caribbean people, we are naturally good at refusing to accept things. We refuse to accept that cricket isn't the world's greatest sport, that doubles doesn't count as breakfast, and that small islands cannot win gold medals at the Olympics and World Championships.
Today, I'm asking you to refuse to accept that the Caribbean must remain the world's second most unequal region. We require you to change that.
So, economics majors, you're not just studying supply and demand. You must focus on designing systems, creating opportunities, not barriers. You should be asking, how do we build an economy where young people don't need five years of experience for their first job?
Computer science students, you should not just be coding algorithms. You should be seeking to build digital infrastructures connecting every community in the Caribbean to global opportunities. How do we ensure a child in the most remote village in the Caribbean has the same digital access as someone in New York City?
Gender studies and other majors, how do we shatter barriers preventing Caribbean women from reaching their full potential?
So why am I burdening you with all of this that we have failed to solve? This moment is different. You have at your fingertips tools that previous generations could only dream of. Your grandmother waited days for letters; you can video call someone in Japan right now. Your grandfather had to travel to town to get to a library; you can access global information from that thing that has become part of us—I forgot mine in the office and I'm having withdrawal symptoms—the cell phone.
A Trinidad startup can't compete with Silicon Valley, but tools without vision create nothing. Vision without skills changes nothing.
So, I want to charge you with five missions:
Mission one: Become job creators, not just job seekers.
Mission two: Seek to cross every boundary. If you're studying business, take a computer science course. Be interdisciplinary. Be like a good Caribbean meal—everything mixed together creates magic. Solutions exist at the intersections of these disciplines, not in silos.
Mission three: Think globally but act locally. As you encounter things, how can this impact the Caribbean positively?
Mission four: Don't just think of yourself. Measure success by inclusion. Whatever you create, ask, does this lift up those left behind? Success for you must not just be about getting yours; it's ensuring there's enough for everyone.
And mission five: Become bridge builders between sectors, islands, innovation and tradition, and generations.
The Caribbean has been waiting for you. We've waited for you—the generation that would refuse to accept that small islands must remain economically dependent. We've been waiting for you—the generation that would crack the code on sustainable development.
Your impact will be measured by how many young people won't need to leave the Caribbean for opportunity, how many women will shatter glass ceilings that you helped to crack, how many communities will thrive from innovations created.
So, 20 years from now, when the next generation sits in this auditorium, or maybe a big, fancy new one, what will they say about your class? Will they say you talked about change while complaining on social media? Or will they say that you became the change? Will they say you studied inequality as an academic exercise? Or will they say that you did something to eliminate inequality?
The choice is yours. Choosing to do nothing is still a choice, but it's a choice with serious consequences.
Your mission begins now. You are not just UWI students. You're the Caribbean's best hope for breaking cycles that have trapped us for generations. The region is watching. The world is waiting. Your aunties are taking photos right now for Facebook.
Make history. Make your families proud. And graduate on time so we can celebrate together again at graduation.
Welcome to The UWI. Welcome to The UWI Five Islands. Welcome to your mission. Welcome to the place where Caribbean transformation begins.
I thank you.
