Luke Browne, the 2008 Caribbean Rhodes Scholar has hired a team of lawyers and is hunkering down for a legal fight with the University of the West Indies (UWI) over whether he ought to have been given a higher class of degree.

Browne, who studied economics and mathematics for three years at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, believes he deserves first class honours.

UWI Cave Hill thought he warranted no more than upper second class honours for the economics degree.

Now the Vincentian has accused UWI of tarnishing his academic record, having failed so far to convince the regional institution to confer higher honours on him.

Principal of the university Professor Hilary Beckles has dismissed Browne's claims, saying the UWI has looked into the matter and found no evidence to support his allegations.

Browne insists that he is being treated unjustly and has retained a legal team headed by Parnell Campbell, QC, to challenge the class of degree he has been awarded.

"I have no degree from the university, and I do not intend to accept a degree that says anything else (than first class)," Browne told a local newspaper here this week.

The Rhodes Scholar enters Oxford University in October to read for a master of philosophy in development studies.

First class honours is conferred on a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 3.60. Browne's GPA stands at 3.56.

Complaints

Among his complaints against UWI is that in one course, the exam was set on material that was not taught, was not in the recommended text and did not appear on any past examination paper.

He charges further that exam regulations were breached when he and his classmates were given less than one week's notice of an assignment's due date, and not the minimum two weeks stipulated by the university regulations.

Formal complaints were made to officials at the university, but to no avail, Browne said.

The former Guild of students president said he has the full support of the Guild which has already collected over 1,000 signatures on a petition to demand that the university resolve this and other matters affecting the upcoming graduation ceremony.

"The university needs a total purge of the thinking that students are inferior and not worth their attention," Browne said.