Post-audit Review

Post-audit Review

The boss that brings out the worst in you

The boss that brings out the worst in you

What an Amateur You have Been

What an Amateur You have Been

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. 

Academic Freedom in the Fetters of Managerialism

Recently, a junior colleague found herself in a precarious employment situation facing a salary reduction as her workload had slipped below the university’s minimum teaching load requirement under the workload policy. One of the units she had previously taught had been taken off her and assigned to another staff member.  As a substitute she was offered a unit which she felt compelled to refuse. She felt the new unit was not quite within her desired area of specialization and the timing of the offer did not allow her sufficient time to prepare to deliver the unit even as mentoring was part of the offer.  Had she accepted, she would have been safely within the policy minimum.

The case that played out made me wonder  if any other staff member in her situation would have acted in the same manner, or the financial disadvantage would have been too great a risk and so she/he would have accepted a unit she/he would rather not have under different circumstances. 

The university may have acted well within policy expectations to reduce her salary but to those of us  whose field of  practice is Higher Education Culture and Change Management, the case highlights the vagaries that academics now have to content now under the regime of management-defined academic practice.  This case reminded me of a case in the United States as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education  where an adjunct professor of English has been denied further engagement by the college that had employed him.

The fight for the right to define and exercise academic freedom, the defining belief of the university and its professions, in many a university has been won by academic managers of the old school.  My colleague is just one in the trail of many wrecked academic lives left by the new governance logic of managerialism. 

In an era where old-style centralized management is ill-suited for the globalized corporate world, it seems to have found a niche in many universities.  Now ensconced, the university is redesigned to its specifications making strange the organization for its professionals.  All too evident are the outcomes of the operational logic of directive management.  Academics face tenuous security of employment, dis-empowerment and de-professionalization—the upshot of which is that freedom for the academic has been expelled from the university or at best severely controlled.

Assuring the Quality of Pacific Islanders' Education

Small island nations of the Pacific Islands Forum will soon have a regional quality assurance network that will provide a mechanism to integrate and assure the quality and standards of education provided within the island countries.

Benchmarked against international standards in the regional and more broadly, Pacific Islanders can enjoy the benefits of having internationally recognized qualifications.  The cross-border portability of the qualifications promises to increase employment prospects of islanders beyond national boundaries.  Cross accreditation of programs or components of knowledge will also facilitate cross border transfer of studies.

This initiative slated for piloting in July 2011, though appearing to be new, has been a decade in development being on the agenda of successive Pacific Forum Education Ministers' meetings since 2001. 

Such a regional quality assurance mechanism should help lift the image of education in countries such as Papua New Guinea (PNG), which has in recent times, taken a battering both internally and externally.

The new regional quality assurance framework has two components. First there is the regional qualifications framework (PQF) that contains different qualification levels and descriptors which are internationally comparable criteria based on competencies, skills, and outcomes. The PQF will be used to interpret equivalence or comparability of programs.  A determination will then be made as to the qualification it should be register as in the Pacific Register of Qualifications and Standards (PRQS), which is the other component.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Board of Educational Assessment (SPBEA), based in Fiji, is the regional body entrusted with the responsibility to champion and coordinate the development. The SPBEA is an intergovernmental regional organization set up in 1980 to assist its nine-member countries to develop assessment procedures towards national or regional certificates. Its constitution was amended to empower it to undertake the expanded role to develop the new quality assurance framework.

 The SPBEA has held both regional and in-country workshops to harmonize the regional quality assurance framework with in-country frameworks.  The PNG in-country workshop was held at the Lamana Hotel  in Port Moresby, over 27^th and 28^th of April, 2011, which I was fortunate to attend. The meeting allowed the SPBEA to consult with PNG stakeholders on the Pacific Register of Qualifications and Standards (PRQS).

To harmonize their systems with the regional qualifications framework, individual nations need to develop their national qualifications frameworks as well as create a data base of qualifications or register. PNG has developed one which consists of 10 levels and descriptors beginning with National certificate 1 to PhD.  Nations will also establish their own qualifications and standards register. These registers are data bases of each country’s certified or quality assured qualifications.  Each country will further have its own central coordination and quality assurance agency perhaps something comparable to Australian Universities Quality Agency, AUQA ), the agency which will be auditing DWU this year.

For higher education in PNG, its Commission for Higher Education (CHE) is assumed to be the highest quality certifying body.  However, each University is also a self-accrediting body.  Other levels of education in PNG have their own standards-certifying bodies.  Obviously, much internal harmonizing is needed in the first instance in the PNG's case.

What was mooted for the new quality assurance regime, at least at the meeting, is that the Office of Higher Education (OHE) be recognized as the in-country quality agency which is responsible for collaborating with all other education standards certifying bodies.  The national quality agency will submit qualifications for determination and listing in the regional qualifications register.  These qualifications will have in the first instance been accredited by national qualifications agencies.

PNG’s proposed new integrated national quality assurance mechanism has the following advantages.It spells out the different levels of qualifications and the education and training pathways through which the qualifications can be gained.  It also brings together within a single regulatory framework the present ad hoc system of awards provided through basic education, skills, and competencies and higher education. It also allows for all qualifications to be scrutinized by competent state authorities for the purpose of ensuring compliance with national and international standards of qualifications.

There are though some possible negative implications as far as  university autonomy is concerned.  Universities’ internal quality assurance processes may no longer be sufficient mechanisms to certify quality of the programs they delivery. But, universities might be required in the best interest of the students to adhere to the new regime. If having qualifications registered regionally translates to increased employment prospects for Papua New Guineans, cross accreditation of programs and higher visibility of institutions, these are sufficient  incentives to comply. 

E-learning: an emerging quality assurance challenge for PNG

Divine Word University (DWU) has now an e-learning centre going by the suggestive name of “evision 2050”. The building and e-learning-mediating technologies and support resources contained therein are part of DWU’s institutional strategy to offer more Papua New Guineans knowledge and learning. This contribution to increase HE access is needed to support the National 2050 Vision goals, the achievement of which will  need some 265 000 skilled workers beyond 2030 according to the Office of Higher Education.

Having facilities such as the “evision 2050” centre  would suggest that it is technically possible for Papua New Guineans to enrol in programs offered online by universities both within Papua New Guinea (PNG) and internationally- even from the top ranked universities in the world. 

Whilst e-learning holds out exciting possibilities to Papua New Guineans, the question is whether having a building equipped with ICT technologies and electronic databases mean that DWU and another other institutions that may have just established such facilities, can immediately launch into online or e- learning provision of higher education. 

What some eminent experts on e-learning say, even as they applaud the public good that online learning offers, not only poses a challenge for DWU and other PNG universities considering the online program offering option but  also carries a caution that Papua New Guineans interested to study programs offered through this mode should sit up and take note. 

One of the key concerns is with the quality of online programs.  In short, the concern is with how well the content is designed for this mode of delivery.  Content that is designed for use for traditional on site learning cannot simply be transferred as is to the online learning space. 

Tony Bates (PhD) CEO of Tony Bates Associates Ltd, a private company specializing in consultancy and training in the planning and management of e-learning and distance education, writes that program content needs to be “designed for independent study and therefore easy for learners (and faculty) to use”.  Dr Bates explains that the design of content should be done with the principles of distant learning in mind. It should not be made up of mainly PowerPoint slides, lecture notes, recorded 50 min lectures and pdf files.  He further states: What makes a lot of open content ugly is the lack of design or adaptation to make it suitable for independent or distance study or for third party use. 

Keith Hampson (PhD) founder of LinkedIn group “Higher Education Management Group” explains what he sees as the key determinant of quality of online programs:

In most cases, high quality content requires significant investment, a team of specialists, and a true division of labour - none of which are in place at traditional universities. Yes, it's possible for the lone academic to produce inexpensive, home-grown content - but it's always going to be the exception, and exceptions should not serve as the basis of policy or institutional strategy. 

Dr Hampson’s view is in line with what a panel of e-learning experts from three public universities in the US expressed at the 8th Annual Sloan Consortium Blended  Learning Conference Workshop held between 29-29 March, 2011.  It was reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education  that panellists expressed that one of the problems with starting online programs is that it "can mean significant upfront costs for technology, training, and instructional designers". 

For PNG and its institutions of higher learning to adopt online learning as part of their strategies to increase access to higher education, their will require meaningful investment in both instructional design expertise and ICT technologies required to deliver quality programs.  PNG higher education policy makers will also need to provide policy guidelines to assure quality of online teaching and learning.