Eleven graduate with honours

The University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) has for the first time graduated 11 students with Bachelor of Arts honours in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) yesterday.
SHSS executive dean professor Leo Marai said it’s a significant event for the school as well as the university to graduate the highest number compared to previous years.
He said other schools like science and business have the honours programmes but only few graduate.
“Twenty top performing students in Social Work, Political Science and Anthropology among other disciplines applied in 2022 after their final year and were accepted to the programme but only 11 students graduated.
“One student was supposed to graduate under first class yesterday but due to administrative issues, she will graduate next year. Nine students under second class, scored a Grade Point Average of three and above while other two in third class scored below three,” he said.
Marai said it is a normal programme in the university but it was not effective until 2022 when he managed to emphasise on the post graduate training and this has been successful under his leadership in the last two years.
“We need to build capacity within the university for top students to be employed and contribute to the human resource of the country.
“Over the years, many students who should be employed as academics graduate, go out elsewhere,” he said.
“About four students will be permanently employed by the university under the teaching fellowship programmes,” he said.