Another step in the right direction

 PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill doesn’t mince his words when it comes to matters of education.

As the champion of free education in Papua New Gui­nea, O’Neill has walked the talk that his predecessors could only dream about.

Now the mastermind of the Tuition Fee Free (TFF) policy has come up with another initiative – to start a loan scheme for students attending universities.

O’Neill told staff and students during the University of PNG graduation on Thursday that the university student loan scheme would help those who could not afford the fees. “Many of our parents are very poor and cannot afford to send their children to university. As a result, the cycle of poverty continues,” he said. The Government proposes to allocate K200 million to establish a Tertiary Education Fund and start a student loan scheme next year. This will be topped up each year so that students can borrow and repay over the lifetime of each student as soon as he or she earns some income. Every loan that is repaid will go into the fund to continue to educate more students.

O’Neill says the loan scheme will open up university education opportunities for people who desire academic success but do not have the money. “This programme will enable all our children to be educated – not only those who can afford it.”

Similar funding schemes have been successfully introduced in countries like Aus­t­ralia and there is no reason to doubt its success in PNG.

As the Prime Minister rightly stated, “We must continue to consistently invest more funds in education, at least over the next 10 years, so that we can truly change our country.”

While the Tertiary Education Fund is a most commendable initiative to edu­cate more students in universities, the niggling issue of more graduates and fewer jobs will continue to haunt the political leadership. Employment opportunities are largely dependent on the country’s economy and the size of its public and private sectors.

Despite a booming economy, which has been spurred by the development and production of liquefied natural gas, the PNG jobs market is limited and is unable to absorb the high number of graduates that are being churned out by our universities each year. 

Unfortunately for many of those who received their degrees and diplomas last week, graduation day is just the start of a long wait-and-hope period.

Some of the luckier ones will be able to secure jobs within a short time while others will have to wait for a while. Still, others will be forced to find jobs that are not related to their fields of study.

Government and business leaders have said that there are alternative ways of providing paid and self-employment opportunities for university graduates. One of them is to create more opportunities in the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector where graduates can use their particular skills and know-how to set up businesses, which can provide employment for other citizens. 

These new entrepreneurs will need seed money from government funding agencies like the National Development Bank to kick-start their businesses.

While only a minority are likely to venture into private enterprise, most university graduates will still be seeking paid employment and therefore the windows of opportunity are being opened to them in other countries.

In fact, there is an increasing number of our university educated professionals who are working overseas. Many of them have gained higher degrees in foreign universities and have stayed on to work in those countries.

This bodes well for PNG as an exporter of highly educated professionals.

The Prime Minister’s vision on education and initiatives like the Tertiary Education Fund will go a long way in ensuring the country has an abundance of well-educated and high-skilled people to enhance its growth and prosperity.

As O’Neill said recently, “Without an educated population, we will only continue to have issues with high unemployment, high crime rates and low morale driven by people unable to secure jobs.”

Education is indeed the light at the end of the PNG tunnel.