Education
Why USP Needs to Lift its Game Plan
Vice Chancellor Siwatibau outlines reasons
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For each of the 5000 students attending its central campus at Laucala Bay, Suva, the main University of the South Pacific (USP) has one-and-a-half more working the harder way.
They have self-discipline needed to earn a degree through USP's extension service and by using the university¹s 14 centres established in the university's member countries.
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USP, which opened its doors in 1968 as a collective venture by 12 Pacific Islands governments, promotes itself as being not only a world leader in distance education techniques, but the world leader.
The unique role it has in teaching students scattered about in a parish tens of millions of square kilometres in area gives its claim credence. Distance education with about 200 credit courses is administered by the university's extension service department. This also manages the administrative and academic operation of 14 centres located in each of the university's 12 member countries. Distance education students are provided with a variety of printed materials, video and audiocassettes, and Internet support to assist them with their studies. Most centres organise face-to-face and audio satellite tutorials and video conferencing and broadcasting.
The centres are becoming more important to USP, says vice chancellor, Savenaca Siwatibau.
Centre directors met at the Laucala Bay campus recently to discuss future strategies.
"We expect them to be our ambassadors in the countries they are located," Siwatibau says.
It's their business to be aware of the strategic development of the country they are in, of the policies and sectors including education.
"They are our antenna very close to the ground and they're expected to know about what goes on with local aspirations, and to supply feedback so that the Suva campus can decide on how to better serve our region, in addition to all our normal distance education delivery."
Siwatibau says all the centres adjust to meet different local needs.
The overwhelming pressure is for more USP activity on their home turf.
"We have to target more and more on students who don't have to come all the way to Suva, or Samoa (the USP School of Agriculture), or Vanuatu (the law school); people like civil servants, or private sector people who are working.
"Part of our objective is to take the service out there to them. It is much cheaper and more convenient for them, and it is growing exponentially. We are promoting a big market and making money in the process."
Making the USP centres something more than they are now doesn't necessarily entail heavy investment in buildings.
"We don't have to build buildings all the time," the vice chancellor says.
"There are churches and schools which might not be in use in the evening or over the weekend. We can negotiate the use of such arrangements with governments."
"One of our strategies is decentralisation. This is sound politics The Pacific Islands countries need some glue to hang together because even Fiji by itself cannot afford a university like this. It is part of our medium term risk management strategy too; to divest our operations so that if we have trouble in one country it won¹t disrupt the overall functioning of the university too much. We think we have flexibility with our investment in modern technology to do that."
A critical new distance-learning tool for USP is USPNet, launched in 2000 and able to relay three video broadcasts an hour to the centres through the USPNet satellite.
Like other regional institutions, the USP is dogged by high telecommunications costs.
"Because we are an educational institution we get concessions. But we think that the monopoly position with the telecom business in a lot of the countries is a big drag on what we do, and in investment in all our countries generally," Siwatibau says.
"We think they should all be opened up in a globalising world to encourage investment across the sector."
Despite the technological advances of recent years, learning at a distance isn't easy.
"If you are out there in the field alone, you need a lot more motivation," the vice chancellor says. "In terms of servicing, we have problems with technology and so on. We do our best, but it is not cheap to provide that service. Compared to that is the alternative of no service at all exported to where the consumer is.
"If you ultimately get a degree sitting in Kiribati, we treat that as the same degree compared to somebody coming here and sit in class.
"But it is not an easy area, it is one which needs a lot of on-going attention. We need to continue to invest in it."
One Australian university has already opened a campus at Suva just a few hundred metres away from USP's location. At least one more plans to open shop in Fiji, and USP expects to later meet competition from others.
"This is why we have to lift our game all the time," Siwatibau says. "We accept competition. That's the world as it is. We will just have to run faster than everybody else."
