College’s function transferred to higher education

PORT Moresby Business College is one of the higher education institutions to have its function transferred from the Education Department to the Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (DHERST), principal Carmela Mokulabeta says.
She said the school had been preparing for the transition since the higher education reform Bill was passed in Parliament on Aug 27.
Mokulabeta said they had written degree programmes to make the college a university by 2025.
“A new vision for us is to offer degree programmes by 2021, we have written new diploma programmes because we have to prepare ourselves for the transition,” she said.
Some of the diploma programmes that the college plans to introduce include diplomas in economics, marketing, entrepreneurship and banking and finance.
“These are the new courses that we are programming for our school so we can take it over to DHERST and see if we can meet the (requirements for) degree programmes.”
In 2017, the National Executive Council approved key strategies in the higher and technical education strategic implementation plan (2017-2038) to transfer all higher education institutions offering post-secondary education to DHERST.
This included technical, business, nursing and teachers colleges and other specialist technical and higher institutions such as agriculture and maritime colleges. A technical group has been working between DHERST and the Education Department in ensuring the necessary protocols were completed.
With the Bill passed in Parliament, the higher education institutions will be transferred over to DHERST upon completion of the legalities.
No formal announcement has been made yet but according to Mokulabeta, they were informed by the Education Department that the college needed to transition by 2022.