Fiji's new

Modest start for Fiji's new University

Fiji’s new University of the South Pacific will be on quite a modest scale when it opens on February 1 at the old RNZAF flying-boat base at Laucaia Bay, near Suva.

The university will start with only two classes. One will consist of first year students from the Fiji School of Medicine and the Fiji School of Agri culture. The other will comprise students, nearly all from Fiji, who have passed the University entrance examination.

There will be about 85 students in residence and 210 day students. Be sides those from Fiji, there are some from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the New Hebrides, and the British Solomon Islands Protectorate.

Board and lodging is £F4O a term and tuition is £lO a term. Lunch and dinner for day students will be pro vided at 2/6 per meal.

The students will work at approxi mately New Zealand University scholarship level, the first four to six weeks of the opening term being de voted mainly to English.

Degree classes for arts and science students will not begin until 1969.

Dr. Colin C. Aikman, Professor of Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law and Dean of the Law Faculty at the Victoria University of Wellington,

has been appointed Vice-Chancellor designate of the University of the South Pacific.

Dr, Aikman is expected to take up his duties in April or May.

He is a barrister and solicitor, and an expert on constitutional law. He has frequently served as a New Zealand representative in the General Assembly of the United Nations and on its committees. He also helped draw up the present Cook Islands constitution.

To begin with, the Fiji university will have a teaching staff of only a dozen or so. But the Interim Council has authorised up to 10 appointments of professorial rank to be made this year and up to 15 appointments at lecturer and senior lecturer level for next year.

By late last year, the P-NG Uni versity in Port Moresby, which opened last March, had already ap pointed 11 professors, one associate professor, 10 senior lecturers, 10 lecturers, 15 tutors, a couple of re search assistants, and a variety of laboratory technicians. In addition, there were 10 librarians, numerous secretaries and administrative staff.

This large staff served 226 students.

Of the total of 226 (of whom 46 were part-time), 131 were doing pre liminary year courses (i.e., courses designed to bring them up to uni versity entrance standard); 88 were doing first-year courses; and seven (all Australians) were studying for higher degrees.

The first-year students were divided into three faculties—arts, law and science.

Dr. Aikman.