This evening about 500 of you young women and men will be embarking on the next phase of your life's journey.

And we all wish you well.

The decisions that you take at this time about your future careers will have far-reaching effects not only on your individual lives but on those of your family and your country.

The knowledge and training that you have received here at the University of the West Indies equips you with valuable tools, which you can use for the good of your community here in Jamaica and the region.

We have to ask, however: which countries have benefited most from the work done by this great institution over the decades?

A paper dated June 2006 on the emigration of highly skilled workers from Jamaica, prepared by a talented team from the Planning Institute of Jamaica, paints a disturbing picture.

The study shows that for every Jamaican with a tertiary education living in Jamaica there are more than three living abroad.

The most current statistics available for the study were from the start of the decade, and this found that of Jamaicans over the age of 25, with tertiary education, 89,000 continued to live in Jamaica and 291,000 chose to live overseas.

This reality, combined with the fact that only a relatively small percentage of us receive a tertiary level education in the first place, predicts a most depressing future for our beloved island.

That is, unless we change this trend.

Barbados and Trinidad are setting targets of having 60 per cent of their students achieving tertiary-level training within 10 years or so.

They realise that their future prosperity will depend more on the quality of their people and less on the abundance of their natural resources.

Challenges

We in Jamaica have two challenges that have to be met successfully if we want to not only ensure a future, but to enhance this future for our people.

The first challenge is to so reorganise our educational establishment that we, too, can set a 60-per cent target of tertiary education for our young people.

This reorganisation would need to start in the primary schools so that those entering secondary schools are literate and numerate.

It will then need to include the secondary schools to further ensure that those who pass through these institutions are prepared for a tertiary education.

We can then deal with the matter of achieving a 60-per cent target of tertiary education for those who leave secondary school.

That is a major challenge and will require great effort, commitment and resources if we are to meet this challenge.

The second major challenge for Jamaica is to ensure that the quality of life and the opportunities that exist on the island are such that we no longer lose three out of every four university graduates to some foreign land.

This evening, I throw out these challenges to you, the graduating class of 2009, as you move on to the next stage of your life.

And I ask you to adopt these two challenges as objectives in the years to come.