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Education Education

Other concerns backdated salary adjustments totaling around FJ$13.8 million
The staff paper raises other concerns such as USP losing (US$6.09 million).
close to 5000 full-time students between 2021 and 2024, The staff paper is asking the USP Council to remove
according to the 2024 Annual Plan. The unions claim that a Ahluwalia when his current contract ends in August.
Programme and Course Review Exercise in 2021 led by Deputy “We strongly believe it would be to the detriment of our
Vice Chancellor & Vice President Education, Professor Jito regional academic institution of higher education if Professor
Vanualailai, showed that nearly 70% of the courses offered at Pal Singh Ahluwalia were to remain as VCP for another two
USP were irrelevant. years,” the report said. “We believe that the evidence we
The unions want the recommendations of the review have provided supports the notion that VCP Ahluwalia is not
exercise to be made available. They also want to know if fit to lead. The degree of improvement that is needed by
the process of USP’s higher education programmes being the VCP for the institution to succeed, is beyond the scope
accredited with Fiji’s Higher Education Commission is up-to- of a two-year period, and is highly improbable given all the
date. evidence to date.”
“If a large number of programmes are not accredited, and The unions said the call to remove Ahluwalia will not affect
the University continues to offer them, then the problem with the mediation talks currently underway between them and
the mismatch between what USP is teaching and what the the USP administration.
market needs, will continue to escalate. - Reported by Joe Yaya
The paper also points to USP’s student completion rates
dropping from 37% in 2015 to 18% in 2021, according to USP’s
2024 Annual Plan. While it does not provide figures for 2022 Editor’s Note
and 2023, the 2022 student retention rate stood at 67%, a 9% Good journalism demands balance, in the interests of
drop since 2016. fairness and objectivity. In our reporting on the ongoing
The report also claims that in the six months from developments at the University of the South Pacific (USP)
September 2023 to March 2024, the number of USP over the last four months, we have found it consistently
administration and support staff dropped from 814 to 537, difficult to establish balance. While there has been a
while academic and professional staff positions dropped from strong, common thread of concerns emanating from
253 to 191 – compromising the quality of education provided within members of the Senior Management Team, the
at USP. USP Council, and other senior academics at USP—most
The absence of proper academic supervision “is also having of whom have been hesitant to go on record but have
a negative impact on Master’s and PhD completion”, both of verified internal machinations of-the-record—USP
which dropped by 23% (PhD) and 52% (Master’s) between 2018 management has remained out of reach, refusing to
and 2022. answer any of our questions. In our March cover story on
Fiji’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Professor USP, we tried to address that deficit by getting the views
Biman Prasad, who is a former USP academic, earlier told of other Vice Chancellors in the South Pacific to establish
Islands Business that after the COVID-19 induced drop in some degree of comparative analysis. In this update, we
numbers and students switching to online mode, recovery in have been left with little choice but to run what virtually
student numbers will take some time. amounts to a one-sided story based on the account
The unions are also agitating over what they claim is the of USP’s unions. Even there, the unions have become
delay in releasing the Council Outcomes of the April Council extremely jittery about saying too much, after one of
meeting. The Council secretariat is tasked with releasing the their representatives got taken to task over revelations
Outcomes after every Council meeting. The Council meeting she made in our March cover story. With management
was held on 29-30 April. once again refusing to answer our queries, the editorial
The unions claim that when the Council resolutions favour difficulty that poses has been offset by the significant
management, they release the Outcomes straight away. They public interest issues involved. Judging by what we’re
say that because of the staff paper at last year’s May Council seeing unfold this year, there are evidently issues around
meeting which listed around 15 issues against management, governance and transparency. And only the University
including Ahluwalia’s relocation to Fiji, “the official Outcome administration can set the record straight. It needs to
was released just two weeks before the November Council.” provide a response to the taxpayers of the South Pacific
Islands Business has sent several emails to USP Council and who fund this regional institution. Our job is simply to
Senate Secretariat manager Totivi Bokini, with no response. continue asking questions on their behalf.

Industrial action richard@islandsbusiness.com
In March, members of both unions voted to go on strike over

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