When the University of the West Indies (UWI) Global Campus announced a mandatory return to in-person end-of-term examinations for the 2024/2025 academic year, it sparked immediate pushback from hundreds of enrolled students across the Caribbean, who argue the policy change ignores the fundamentally different structure of their online-focused programs and upends the flexible learning model they signed up for.
Student concerns were first formally outlined in an open letter published by Antigua News Room, which laid out the stark disparities in academic resources between Global Campus students and their peers attending UWI’s traditional physical campuses. According to the letter, students on physical campuses benefit from consistent access to full-time faculty, regularly scheduled small-group tutorials, peer tutoring networks, and on-demand academic support that helps them prepare for in-person assessments.
In contrast, Global Campus students report that their program is structured around independent, self-paced learning with very limited live instructional time. Many courses offer only four or fewer live sessions per semester, with some sessions cramming coverage of multiple entire course units into a single meeting, while others are dedicated solely to reviewing assignments rather than unpacking complex core content. The letter also highlights persistent issues with a lack of accessible tutorial support, delayed responses from instructors to student questions, and an expectation that students will work through the vast majority of course material independently.
Students argue that this major gap in academic preparation makes the uniform requirement of in-person exams unfair. They are being held to the same assessment standard as on-campus students without receiving the same level of live instruction and exam preparation support.
Beyond issues of academic fairness, students point out that the shift to in-person exams undermines the core flexibility that drew many non-traditional learners to the Global Campus in the first place. Working adults, student parents, and other learners who structured their work and family schedules around the fully online model now face significant practical disruptions.
Similar frustrations have emerged in Saint Lucia, where a second-year Global Campus student spoke with St Lucia Times about the impact of the policy change. She explained that she enrolled in the program under the explicit understanding that both coursework and examinations would remain fully online, a model that worked seamlessly for her during her first year. Back then, exams were administered online via a proctored browser, giving students a broad window of time to complete their assessments, which allowed her to balance her full-time job and academic responsibilities without conflict.
The 2024/2025 policy change upended that arrangement. Students are now required to travel to designated in-person exam sites on specific scheduled days, a requirement that interferes with work productivity and leads to tangible financial losses. “Some of us lose paid work hours as we’re out of hours due to commute time plus exam time and back,” the student explained. “We may have to use sick days, and you cannot call out every time you have an exam. Imagine having to be out for four days, or in at work and then out and back because you have four exams on different days.”
Students across multiple Caribbean islands are calling on UWI to grandfather current students into the original online exam model that they agreed to when they enrolled, allowing them to complete their degrees under the terms they started with. To push for this change, students organized a petition that gathered hundreds of signatures. While university officials formally acknowledged receipt of the petition and the concerns raised in it, the institution has so far declined to reverse the policy, leaving many students feeling unheard and facing unnecessary pressure as they prepare for their end-of-term assessments.