universities in PNG

Books

A troubled birth for universities in PNG

A Thousand Graduates: Conflicts in University Develop ment in Papua New Guinea, 1961-76. By lan Howie-Willis.

Pacific Research Monograph Number Three, published by Australian National Univer sity, Canberra, 1980. ISBN

0 909150 01 X. Sab.Oo.

lan Willis is well qualified to write of the beginnings and growth of the two universities in Papua New Guinea. He taught and did research in the Univer sity of Papua New Guinea. A Thousand Graduates is not only a fine historical record of the two institutions, it is also an important record of some Aust ralian altitudes leading to politi cal independence in PNG.

Willis describes the problems the institutions had in their dealings with the Australian Minister for Territories and with the minister’s department.

He discusses the conflicts which arose between the universities and the Australian adminis tration of PNG and with the PNG government. He details the findings of two commissions of inquiry into university devel opment the Brown Com mittee (1970) and the Gris Committee (1973). He writes of the worries of the PNG Direc tor of Education about the lack of rationalisation in tertiary education, ‘the strongly en trenched conservative element within the university (of PNG) professorial board’, and ‘the hidden curriculum’ at UPNG.

This led to the setting up of the Brown Committee. I don’t know what led to the establishment of the Gris Committee, but one of the widely-circulated rumours was that it was at the behest of a critic of UPNG wanting to see the institution operating as some sort of ‘barefoot univer sity’. As it turned out, both committees seem to have been a complete waste of lime and money. Their reports brought minimal response. Willis also links some of the internal and external conflicts to person alities.

When I was invited to review A Thousand Graduates I was greatly leased by the ethics of an acceptance. The monograph was dedicated to my colleague Dr Eric Duncanson and myself.

I had been Vice-Chancellor of UPNG and I’d been a member of the Currie Commission. I had read the original thesis by Willis, and later the monograph now being reviewed, before receiving the invitation. As a member of the. Currie Com mission I felt I could contribute.

Willis wrote of the com mission's report; ‘Their system promised a degree of co ordination within higher edu cation which would minimise the duplication and waste of effort implicit in many separate educational institutions.’ Yet his Chapter Five is given to ‘Problems of Co-ordination'.

Not only had the Minister for Territories and some of his departmental advisers treated the report with disrespect, their consideration of it was confined to the establishment of the university and the institute. The Currie Report was a package deal. It gave gratuitous advice about school and technical edu cation. It is therefore surprising to read that Dr Ken McKinnon, the Director of Education, be moaned the results of a haphaz ard growth of post-school edu cation. It was well within the power of the then Australian administration of PNG to have followed the Currie Com mission advice. Perhaps UPNG was not blameless, but when the Currie Report was not followed regarding the Institute of Higher Technical Education and the Administrative College, UPNG could well ask itself whether it should be used in a piecemeal way to meet the whims of some institutions and not others. Currie rec ommended a school of edu cation within the university to embrace all teacher training, not just the Goroka Teachers College.

The transfer to Lae of the Institute of Higher Technical

Education later to become the Institute of Technology and then the University of Tech nology was a major blunder stemming from the strange transitory ambitions of one man, the late Don Barrett. It has been written of Barrett in PIM that he ‘exuded self confidence, was never still, always planning, pushing, work ing, talking’. Willis writes that Barrett was seen as a ‘trouble some meddler’ who would never be satisfied to stay in the background for long. Barrett could be a most capable admin istrator and planner, and his organisation of the 1969 Third South Pacific Games in PNG was outstanding. Earlier he had been president of the Planters Association of New Guinea for many years, yet he was an unsuccessful farmer perhaps only because of the lime he spent on political and public affairs which so attracted him.

He was not an astute politician, he lost elections as often as he won them. Because he and his minority support in the council of the Institute of Higher Tech nical Education couldn’t have their way, Barrett acted un ilaterally and was able to get the House of Assembly to transfer the Institute from Port Moresby to Lae. The cost in money terms and the incalculable cost of conflicts have been made PNG the poorer.

Before I was invited to review A Thousand Graduates I had just finished reading Melbourne Studies in Education 1980,

edited by Stephen Murray-

Smith. In this there are two chapters about the universities in PNG. One by Professor K. S.

Inglis, a former UPNG Vice- Chancellor, tells about the first 10 years there. The other by Sir Louis Matheson, former Chan cellor of the University of Technology, an eminent engin eer and the creator of Monash University, tells of the develop ment of UOT and asks ‘could a different route have been fol lowed?’ He thinks so! ‘lf Currie and his colleagues had specified

a full university, Auslralian slyle, for Waigani' (Waigani is the Port Moresby suburb con taining UPNG) ‘UPNG would have had a complete outfit’, he writes. Indeed, the Currie Com mission might well have done this but it was convinced the highest priority had to be given in the first instance to ‘know how’ training in various techno logical fields. It mulled over the problem, as indeed it was being mulled over in Australia at the time.

Just as Australian education saw the need for what were to become colleges of advanced education, the Currie Com mission anticipated what was formulating in the minds of Marlin, Wark and many others, and proposed an institution that could have worked if people had wanted it to work. It had seen something similar working in Australia. The commission wanted to preserve the defin ition of a university, and yet provide for training below the ‘know-why’ level. Even in medi cine, the commission prescribed the qualification of Licentiate which could be acceptable to the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom rather than a degree. But just as altitudes in Australia changed and the advanced colleges look on a different, ambitious, ex panding mien, so in PNG the Institute of Higher Technical Education became the Institute of Technology and then the University of Technology. The processes followed the path taken by the University of New South Wales, just as the Currie Commission had predicted they would if the technical institute were divorced from the univer sity.

It is interesting to note that recently two Christian missions - the Seventh-day Adventists in Port Moresby and the Roman Catholic Church in Madang are creating tertiary insti tutions. These have been

euphemistically called univer sities by the PNG Deputy Prime Minister when in fact they are training colleges, as was well said by Father Morrison in Madang where he is building ‘something similar to what the Institute of Tech nology in Lae started out to be'.

He said that the church’s aim is to fill what he called the skill gap- If only the Currie Report had been thoroughly read by those whose duly it was to read it.

there would have been no need for a Brown Committee or a Gris Committee. There would have been rationalised higher education and a minimal but optimum disbursement of funds. UPNG would have had great presilge by now, 1980-81, and a second university to be located in Goroka would have been in the planning stage.

In the sixties and seventies, particularly in developing countries, two words came into prominence, became trendy, when discussing universities.

They were relevance and elitism. A Thousand Graduates gives consideration to both. 1 am not sure I know the meaning of either in the manner they were being used by politicians, some staff and some students.

As for relevance, in the eyes of one university which I studied, it meant implanting in the minds of the students (and the staff) the philosophies of the one political party in power. In another it meant ensuring that the larger ethnic community in the state got places in the professions of choice according to their numbers and not ac

cording to their school perform ances; it also meant teaching and examining in the language of that larger group. A question that was proposed to me by the Gris Committee was ‘how do you prevent the development of an elite?’. I replied you couldn’t - and I stick to that. The Director of Education saw something sinister at UPNG which he called a ‘hidden cur riculum’. The UPNG students and staff took a pride in them selves. Is that elitism? Inglis, in Studies in Education, tells of the ‘elite’ bar in the Boroko Hotel, Port Moresby, ‘reserved’ for whites. Students insisted on drinking in it. More power to them! Was this inspired by the ‘hidden curriculum’, by ‘elitism’ or by ‘egalitarianism’?

It didn't matter the univer sity had given them confidence in themselves.

Not only does Willis write the histories of the universities, as I said in the beginning of this review, but much of what he writes is essential reading for those who would know more of the lead-up to self-government and independence. Those who read A Thousand Graduates should also read the two chap ters in Melbourne Studies in Education 1980, and re-read Currie’s Report of the Com mission on Higher Education in Papua and New Guinea. -

John Gunther.

Another

side to

the atom

The Struggle for Power: What We Haven’t Been Told and Why. By John Grover. Pub lished by E. J. Dwyer (Aust ralia) Pty Ltd, Sydney. ISBN 0 85574 211 9. $A9.95.

A major political and social issue in the Pacific Islands today concerns the attitudes of the Islands governments and their people towards nuclear power, nuclear testing and nu clear waste dumping. In some respects, nuclear controversies have been late to develop in the Pacific Islands, running well behind the waves of controversy

which affected many of the developed countries. This is perhaps ironic in view of the fact that the Pacific itself was one of the earliest testing grounds used by developed countries experimenting with nuclear explosions. France is still engaged in a programme of sporadic Pacific nuclear tests, and is almost universally criti cised by Pacific Island com munities as a result.

What has happened is that many of the world powers and industrialised countries even Japan with its memories of being the first country subject to atomic bombing have accepted the use of atomic power for peaceful purposes and are drawing an increasing amount of their power needs from nuclear reactors. Many trade unions in Europe and even some left-wing European policilal parlies are now sup porting nuclear power develop ment and have been putting pressure on their governments to proceed with nuclear plants.

Under today’s technology atomic power is not an immedi ate economic proposition for Pacific Island countries so the controversy is unbalanced by any real pressures to investigate the application of atomic power. The controversy is further fanned by fears that the Pacific will be damaged by the nuclear development of non- Pacific countries. The present controversy about Japan’s pro posal to dump low-level nuclear waste in the north-west Pacific is an example of this.

Australia’s inability to come to grips with its own nuclear altitudes is another factor in the spread of the controversy to the Islands, and there is no doubt that Australian anti-nuclear factions are playing a major part in moulding Pacific Island altitudes. The proposed Pacific Forum of Trade Unions, to be established shortly, is an avowed anti-nuclear movement with heavy support from Aust ralian factions.

Why is the anti-nuclear movement so strong in Aust ralia and why is it becoming entrenched in Pacific Island altitudes? An attempt to answer this forms the subject of John Grover’s new book The Struggle for Power, a heavily-

I documented work with two I themes. One theme is that I peaceful nuclear development I is not the bogey which it has 1 been painted. The other is that the anti-nuclear camp in Aust- I ralia and the Islands is the I product and the victim of I a deliberate international cam- I paign of falsehoods, misrep- I resentation and factual sup pression which has been mounted for purposes of politi- I cal disruption.

Grover labels the campaign [ pop propaganda’ and says it is I playing on the ignorance of I ordinary people, generating needless fears and suppressing I an impressive collection of in [ formation on the benefits of nuclear development.

John Grover, an Australian, is a former geophysical and geochemical worker who has been associated with mineral searches, geological pro grammes and seismo vulcanological work in Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua j New Guinea, New Caledonia and Hawaii. He was awarded a United Nations fellowship and grants from the Nuffield Foun dation and the Royal Society to undertake geophysical research throughout the world. He re turned to Australia in 1977 and says he was appalled at ‘the emotive lies and half-truths being dished out by environ mentalists’ against nuclear power generation. The result is his newly-published book which he describes as a layman’s guide to nuclear affairs. His con clusion is that a conspiracy of disruption, largely formulated in USA, is behind the present Australian and Pacific oppo sition to nuclear development.

He says he is upset to see that politicians often from oppos es parties churchmen, school teachers and trade inions are propagating ‘a well

neaning but damaging cam

paign based on ignorance, lack )f information and downright nisinformation’.

By far the strongest aspect of lis book is the documentation )f its sources. Had Grover nerely expounded his own news of the benefits of peaceful mclear development he may veil have been vulnerable to the ame criticism he levels against nany of the anti-nukes

ignorance and emotion. But his book provides logical support for a threefold argument: That every person should have the opportunity to make an in formed personal decision about the rights or wrongs of peaceful nuclear application, that this opportunity is effectively im

possible today because of a campaign of deliberate misin formation, and that he has assembled and referenced the information which makes in formed decision possible. In this respect his book is not to be

dismissed lightly.

Angus

Smales.