What Is the UPNG Student Government Hiding from the Fight For Truth And Justice In Our Rotted PNG Public Universities?

By OHE Insider

More than one person has wondered why UPNG student government leaders have been so silent as the Unitech Saga has unfolded.   Two weeks ago the officers were happy to fly on a joyride at someone else’s expense to come to Lae and talk with the Unitech SRC.   That has been well established.   But what came of that trip?   Em karim wanem kain kaikai?

Answer: They accomplished essentially nothing.  They never made any effective public statement of support or did anything else visible to demonstrate any real concern about the fate of Unitech students or their cause.    This is deplorable considering that Unitech students are literally risking their college education to fight for changes that could benefit all state universities.

Perhaps someone should remind the UPNG SRC (and in fact, UPNG students in general) to take a look around them next time they go to class.   Where they study now is nothing more than a deteriorating high school by world standards.    It is a total lie that they are getting good education at UPNG.  They, like students and staff of all PNG’s state universities, have spent much too much time over the years focusing on their studies and not enough time exploring how little they’re learning that would make them employable.  

The Garnaut-Namaliu report on the sad state of our universities could find only one significant bright spot in UPNG:  Geology, at least several years ago, was the only notable department in all the PNG public university system that produced graduates competitive for overseas jobs.  

Not any other department, anywhere in our PNG public universities (and maybe private ones too?) achieved international standards.  None.  Nada.   Zero. 

Most everything else about UPNG is depressing, especially for those who attended this premiere university back in the 1970’s.   The teachers were motivating and motivated back then.   In fact, they were so good that when they went back to their home countries, they became like, well, like Ross Garnaut, the co-author of the report on the state of the university’s and today considered one of Australia’s great economists.   

We have no teachers like that today, at UPNG or at any of the other PNG public universities.   All gone.  Packed up or retired.   That includes great national teachers as well, who taught as well and worked as hard as any of the great expatriate teachers. 

How far UPNG has fallen since the 1970’s.   But no government could be more pleased with the silence of our university students than Peter O’Neill and his OHE flunkies, foremost amongst them being OHE Director General David Kavanamur, who himself teaches at UPNG and pretends it is the university of another era.  

What do people like Peter O’Neill, Delilah Gore and David Kavanamur like silent, well behaved students who never protest?   Obviously it is because they are easy to take advantage of!    Passive students can have a quality education pulled right out from under them without them ever looking up and noticing.  Each succeeding generation of students has no history and thus little knowledge of what the generation before them experienced in terms of learning opportunities.  

If students at UPNG (or UOG or UNRE) think they are receiving an education good enough to get a decent job and perform well in that job, they fool themselves.  The major foreign owned businesses in PNG will continue to underpay graduates from our public universities and deny them advancement opportunities so long as they continue to graduate with such a low ranking education, complete with pathetic critical thinking skills.   They will continue to bring in expatriates to do the job that the better PNG college graduates would have a chance at if only they had received a decent education.   UPNG students, try writing a decent editorial on anything for PNG Blogs, or do anything else that will make you realise how little you learnt from 4 years at UPNG, UNITECH, UNRE and  UOG. 

There is no faster pathway to become a nation of sheep passively observing foreign exploitation of our rich natural resources than to continue letting our government financially strangle the public universities with big promises and little delivery in the areas that count.  Always the students end up suffering the results of government’s false promises and corruptly directed programmes.

That brings us back to the UPNG SRC.   Young people, wake up!    The past 2 weeks you have been silent at the peril of the students that you were elected to represent.   Keeping quiet on the sad state of UPNG makes you a party to the mismanagement and corruption that has brought UPNG to its knees.   You may not have the specific issue of Albert Schram, but if you have any concern at all that corruption at UPNG (alive and well) takes away money that otherwise could have been spent on improving UPNG facilities, you should be marching arm in arm with the Unitech students.   THEY care about their education and their employment prospects once they get out.   Maybe UPNG students, starting with the SRC officers, are content living in a dream world.   If so, how pathetic.