Study into State varsities set to begin

By JULIA DAIA BORE
A RESOURCE study of PNG’s State universities and their funding aspects is soon to begin, the Office of Higher Education’s (OHE) acting director general Dr Pongie Kichawen said last Friday.
Dr Kichawen said the resourcing of PNG’s universities had been a continuing problem over a number of years resulting in unrests within those institutional communities.
“As a result, a resource study has been mooted with all the State universities since last November.”
Dr Kichawen told The National that chancellors and vice-chancellors of all State universities met with the OHE last November to discuss the terms of reference (ToR) for this resource study.
He said the OHE had recognised its institutions’ continuing problems and therefore, had engineered the whole process of assisting them in dealing with these problems.
“These issues are the backbone of the Higher Education Research, Science & Technology’s (HERST) Higher Education Plan 2008-2023,” he said.
Dr Kichawen said it aimed to have the universities become entrepreneurial to generate their own incomes; in supplementing the Government’s annual funding to sustain their operations.
He added that the universities were already geared towards that direction to be entrepreneurial.
An example is the University of Goroka, which has an established business arm or company called the Unigor.
The University of Technology has a similar entity and it is called University Developing Company while Univeristy of PNG’s is called UniVenture.
“These are university entities that are geared towards generating income for their individual universities,” Dr Kichawen said.
“In relation to the annual government funding that is allowed to trickle to the universities, currently, on fortnightly or weekly basis that seriously affect the universities’ overall general administration, hence, funding crises,” he said.
“We are discussing possibilities where the universities can receive their funding on a quarterly basis, rather than on weekly or fortnightly-basis.
“We want to also establish whether the State universities have contingencies plans and what these plans are. That is to deal with situations where government grants are not received on time.”