Attract, train and retain: Can we staff our universities?

In the new socio-economic policy context, universities in PNG are singled out as key tools to support a highly ambitious Vision 2050 national development strategy. However, as mentioned in other posts, PNG universities face many challenges, which if not meaningfully addressed, their ability to effectively support national development is hampered.

 One of these critical challenges looming large for the universities is that of adequately staffing themselves for quality performance to meet the expected quantity output.  At least two recent consultancy reports including the Garnaut-Namaliu Review on the sector have singled out this factor as one which will predetermine the quality of higher education provision and therefore, the quality of graduates entering the workforce.

Indications are that universities cannot attract, retain or train the qualified national and international staff they need.  The constraints they face stem from both policy and professional work-life issues.  Of general concern for PNG is that work-life issues such as remuneration, work-life balance, security and work-load burden are leading to a brain drain out of PNG of highly skilled Papua New Guineans including pilots, doctors, and engineers.  Of more pressing worry for PNG and its universities in the context of the development agenda is that amongst those on the track out of PNG are academics of PhD standing.

 As the universities watch the brain drain out, they are unable financially to capitalize on opportunities presented to attract a brain flow-in of mid-career or earlier career international academics. A recent report on the academic profession in Australia suggests that the profession there is under transition as the country anticipates a migration out of early or mid career academics. 

Whilst Australia’s loss is the gain of other nations, it is unlikely that its closest neighbor, PNG, even in economic boom times, is in the position to lure some of these academics to its shores.  Many of the concerns that in the first instance are driving the migration out of Australia of its academics are the same concerns facing academics in PNG. These included pressures of workload, work-life balance issues, remuneration etc.

On the policy front, two work against the universities’ efforts to staff themselves adequately for quality provision. One of these policies curtails the efforts of universities such as DWU which are classified as private. Though privately governed, DWU is in fact a national institution involved in providing higher education as a public service and not for profit. As with other PNG universities, with a limited national pool of PhD qualified candidates to recruit from, and not being financially able to attract early or mid-career international academics, over the years DWU has been able to secure the services of post-career or retired academics and leveraged institution-to- institution partnerships with Australian universities such as Macquarie, James Cook and Australian Catholic universities to boost its staffing levels. Though clearly having benefits for DWU, these strategies however do not provide the assurance needed for long term planning for provision.

Nevertheless, even these sorts of attempts to secure staff are further  hampered in the way these universities are framed as businesses. Such framing subjects these universities to a lengthy and costly process to secure visas and work permits to recruit international staff, a process their public counterparts are not subjected to.  Often willing experts find the lengthiness of the process too long  to endure  and eventually decide not to come.

Another policy constraint that all universities face comes from the “localization policy”, a policy introduced after independence to replace foreign workers with Papua New Guineans. The extent to which it is enforced in the university setting is not known, but it can be stated that such a policy is an antithesis to the organization of the university and academic profession which are by nature cosmopolitan organizations. As such cross-border knowledge fertilization is necessary for currency and quality of teaching and research endeavors.

In view of these particular constraints, if PNG wants its universities to deliver, then it has to effectively empower them. All universities need sufficient funding to attract, retain and to support the training of the next generation of academics. For some universities empowerment means going further to remove counter-productive policy barriers.  The reality is: Without the assurance of sufficient numbers of highly qualified academics, the quality and high numbers of skilled workforce that universities and other HE institutions are expected to deliver is just not going to happen.