Uni, govt dept deal questionable

Editorial, Normal
Source:

The National, Friday July 6th, 2012

IT is heartening to see James Cook University and the Papua New Guinea government formalising a research partnership.
They were to have signed a memorandum of agreement in Cairns, Australia, yesterday paving the way forward.
The research goals are not crystal clear at present but seem to focus on a wide area of community life in the tropics with a view to entrenching such forms in policy or legislation.
The Department of Community Development is the university’s partner on this K11.98 million project that covers 18 research areas.
Our question is: Why has the James Cook University decided to select a government department for this project?
The Department of Community Development’s primary role is not research. Like all other government, it is policy, service and delivery-oriented.
But there are PNG government institutions which are dedicated to the work that James Cook University proposes to undertake in PNG. There are institutions such as the University of PNG for instance.
Should not this university, PNG’s premier institution of learning, be the obvious choice for James Cook to enter into collaborative research programmes together with?
What has happened to UPNG’s appeal as an institution for serious research?
Over the years, the university appears to have lost the appeal, if not the appetite, for research.
Successive government policies have not helped much.
Government education white papers and policies have tended to direct its institutions of higher learning to turn out skilled workers.
Governments have supported serious scientific inquiry in these institutions and so they hardly ever funded serious research.
Yet, it is research which is the “zenith of education” as an educator once put it.
The last best knowledge a student must learn is how best to add new knowledge to his or her field and to their lives.
The world would not be what it is today if people had not spent countless hours researching anything from atoms to quasars and everything in between.
Of course, all institutions which grant degrees must have research programmes. Degrees are granted for original research into certain phenomena which in academia is called thesis.
That happens where ever masters or doctorate degrees are offered such as at UPNG.
The research we talk of here is the types that goes on in special labs – be they in rooms or in a community, developing a publishing record, applying for and obtaining grants and other funding to carry on a serious research programme year after year.
Many people shy away from any suggestion of research including university administrators themselves because they see research programmes as sucking up what little grants are available to the university.
This might have been the case in the past but today research programmes are really a money-spinning venture for universities.
An excellent reliable research programme can be asked by multinational companies to undertake such research as is needed to help it progress better. Serious research into customary land tenure, land holding arrangements and such like would be priceless for multinational resource developers coming into PNG, for instance. But which institution is there to undertake it? Indeed, which institution has the credibility to attract serious inquiry in the first place?
Research brings credibility, it establishes reputation, and grounds any institution as a leader in the development of any country.
Research work is directly linked to economic development because research can cut overheads, introduce finesse to cruder forms of production.
As James Cook University Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Stephen Weller puts it, research undertaken professionally will assist in the “issues of great importance to our nearest neighbour.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if these were collaborative and between two universities rather than between a government department and a foreign university?
Indeed, quite strictly, how much access can a foreign university have into the affairs of a government department in this country?
A question for the government to answer but the greater challenge is for the institutions of learning in PNG such as UPNG: What are your research priorities if any?a