Let’s ‘take back’ our university

EDUCATION

By ALPHONSE BARIASI
OVER the years a number of well-qualified academics who would have otherwise remained at their alma mater have been leaving for teaching jobs abroad or to work in industry or government.
There may be several other reasons but School of Humanities and Social Sciences of UPNG lecturer Dr Leo Marai says with a degree of certainty that one of the main ones is the injustice felt in the dual salaries concept, a legacy of a colonial past.
Dr Leo Marai’s thesis on dual salaries was featured last week in Weekender.
He says in his time a lot of promising academics who have acquired doctoral level qualifications have left the university creating vacancies that have to be filled somehow, and sadly with academics who lack both the requisite qualification and experience for good academic work in regard to teaching, research and publications.
Some of UPNG’s senior lecturers who had been educated there but had left the university to work elsewhere who immediately come to mind are: the late Dr John Kola (chemistry), late Dr Lawrence Kalinoe (law), Dr David Kavanamur (managementcommerce), Dr Albert Mellamn (commerce), Dr Eric Kwa (law) and Dr Mange Matui (law).
Marai says that in all universities, most academics should have at least PhD qualifications. However, most lecturers at UPNG hold masters level qualifications and even degrees. The shortage of much senior and experienced educators and mentors could result in a lowering the quality of teaching and learning the university has been known for at its foundation years. This in turn will reflect upon the kind of human capital the university produces annually.
Marai is worried that “the future of the country’s human resources coming out of our universities does not look promising.”

School faculty numbers
To give an indication of staff numbers, the following figures were obtained from at least three of the schools on campus.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS), the biggest school at UPNG has a total staff of 79 (both full time and part-time). Among them 13 (16.46 per cent) are PhD holders (3 expatriates and 10 nationals) and 66 (83.54 per cent) have masters and basic degrees (two expatriates and 77 nationals). There is only one full academic professor and one associate professor, both of them expatriates. There is no national professor in the Sschool.
The Journalism programme in the SHSS has five academic staff; one (20 per cent) with a master’s degree in journalism, four (80 per cent) have only basic degrees but are teaching courses from year one to year four.

In the School of Law, there are a total of 14 academic staff (full-time and part-time). There is one (7.14 per per cent) PhD holder and 13 (92.86) school faculty members have masters including few with basic law degrees. There is only one academic professor in the school, who is a national.
The School of Business and Public Policy (SB&PP) has a total of 35 full time and part time teaching staff (excluding the Australian National University staff). There are seven (20 per cent) PhD holders in the school (four expatriates and three nationals), 28 (80 per cent) master’s degree holders and degree holders, and one expatriate associate rofessor.
“It is clear that over 80 per cent of the academic staff from the three schools at UPNG do not hold PhDs, which is not a typical feature or characteristic of any university in the world. It should be the other way around, where more PhD holders teach in a particular discipline at a university. UPNG needs more PhD holders and professors to make it a true or credible university by international standards,” Marai says.
There are two reasons for this state of academic staffing across schools at UPNG. One is dual salaries, which made many national PhD holders leave for other jobs over the years. Second, Marai says that expatriate academicss are not interested to come and work in PNG universities, especially from the developed countries due to low salaries compared to many other universities in the world, and other reasons. Most expatriates at the university now are from countries like India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines; very few are from Australia and England.
Housing
It is bad enough working under a dual salary structure, aware that the expat colleague who brings to the lecture room the same degree of human capital is better paid. Things don’t get any better when one goes home to a house that has not seen a fresh coat of paint for years and the front door is bolted shut because the steps have long disappeared.
The poor state of housing at the university is a further de-motivating factor to all staff, not just academics.
The state of Dr Marai’s residence at the famous Fortbanner housing estate, is indicative of nearly all housing on campus built in the founding years of the university. The family uses only the backdoor, the ceiling in a couple of rooms has fallen off, the indoors laundry area is disused.
When we visited a couple of Sundays ago, Marai’s daughter Paniya was washing her school uniform using a bucket in the back courtyard.
This state of the university’s buildings is a fact those in the tertiary education sector, immediate agencies of government responsible and parents know. But requests by the university administration over the years for funding to do regular renovations to staff housing and other infrastructure have ben unheeded.

Other buildings
It is not only staff housing that needs urgent renovation; a number of student dormitories are have been abandoned for a number of years now. It is not known whether maintenance work will start on these student residences any time soon.
The new Australian government funded School of Business and Public Policy building stands in complete contrast to the Luavi female student residential hall.
Walking down from the new building you come to three other student homes that have been condemned and abandoned.
Further beyond there stands the new School of Natural and Physical Sciences (SNPS) faculty building that should have been completed many months ago but because of government funding shortfalls, only steel and concrete stumps of the multi-floor building are standing there today.
We can only imagine the state of other administration and academic buildings such as lecture halls and staff offices.
To repeat a tired cliché, UPNG is the pride of the country. It is the oldest and largest institution of its kind here, established by the colonial administration to produce a class of thinkers to lead a future independent nation.
And true to its mission, the university has has educated the cream of the country’s public service personnel for a long while until others joined it. While other PNG universities offer a selected number of programmes, UPNG has had successful schools of arts, sciences, business, and law running for years.
It has educated past and present prime ministers in Paias Wingti, Rabbie Namaliu, Mekere Morauta, Peter O’Neill and James Marape.
It has educated very senior people in the public service and the private sector. It is still very much the face of higher education in the country.
Yet governments and the public service machinery have left the university’s physical structures and academic soul to disintegrate to such a level it will now require huge injections of public money to restore them.
“Take back PNG”(Marape, 2019) also means take back UPNG. Neglect UPNG and we neglect the past – and more so the future.
Higher education reforms
Parliament has just passed a number of reforms that will see a unified higher education system.
Minister for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology Nick Kuman says all post-secondary institutions will operate under a unified regulatory and administrative framework under his department.
The reforms also transfer private training institutions formerly regulated under the National Training Council Act to the Ministry and DHERST.
Kuman says all institutions will be properly funded, institutions can upgrade their infrastructure in line with national targeted development needs, and DHERST will be responsible for developing curriculum.
But none of these reforms directly address the issue of dual salaries to the liking of academics in state universities.
For them the salary difference should be reduced drastically. Better yet all teachers, local and expat, should be paid the same across the board.
That plus improved resourcing (under the reforms?) can give an assurance that UPNG and other state universities will remain globally competitive.