Augier spent the first seventeen years of his life in St. Lucia. The eldest of three boys, he had a middle class upbringing; his father owned a 'reasonable size grocery shop' in Castries.
At the primary level, he attended Castries Roman Catholic Boy's School. Sadly, his father succumbed to appendicitis when he was only ten years old. Despite her best efforts, his mother was not able to keep the shop going, but she 'made do'. In the 1930s, many West Indians did not go to high school, but Augier attended St. Mary's College (the only secondary school) and completed high school, passing the Cambridge exam at sixteen years old. Although he wanted to go on to tertiary education, the reality was that he had no further prospects. There were no scholarships available to him in St. Lucia at that time. With severely limited options, young Roy went to work at the post office.
World War II broke out when Augier was still a student. While working at the Post Office, he found out that two of his former schoolmates had volunteered for the Royal Air Force. Despite the risk associated with joining the war effort, Augier saw the potential to achieve his dream of continuing his education - if he survived. Fortunately, he did survive, and the British government decided to pay for further studies for all members of the forces.
At the first opportunity in 1946, Augier began making arrangements to continue his education. Another St. Lucian, Sir Arthur Lewis (who would later become Vice Chancellor of the University College of the West Indies) was a respected lecturer at the London School of Economics at this time; he informed Augier that he had been accepted to begin his undergraduate studies in 1947. Unwilling to wait a year, Augier accepted another offer from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he studied Politics and History. He earned his M.A. in 1949.
While still a student at St. Andrews, Augier completed his postgraduate studies in London. One of his mentors at St. Andrews was W.M. MacMillan, a respected historian who had written 'Warning from the West Indies: A Tract for Africa and the Empire', one of the first books to be published that realistically described the region. He received a Diploma in Education from the University of London in 1950, and his PhD in 1954.