University of the South Pacific

Establishing a national university has been widely perceived by smaller developing countries as a means of visibly taking ownership of the country’s economic, social and cultural development.  A national university, funded and directed by the government, can be charged with meeting local labour market needs, addressing social and ethnic inequality, and preserving and celebrating national and cultural identity.  National universities were often established in the early years of post-colonialism, to mark the birth of a newly independent nation – most notably, the National University of Singapore.

In the Pacific, 12 small nation states uniquely cooperated to set up and jointly manage a multi-campus regional university, the University of South Pacific (USP), in 1968.  Loosely modelled on the regional University of the West Indies, USP is funded by its 12 member countries, with donor aid from Australia and New Zealand.  Despite the existence of USP, however, the larger Pacific Island Countries, notably Fiji, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Tonga have all subsequently established their own national universities.  The newest, the National University of Vanuatu, was launched at the start of 2020.

Building a credible national university that meets the needs of multiple stakeholders, often with the limited financial resources of small developing country, presents a raft of challenges.  This paper, using a critical ethnographic methodology, examines the lessons from the first ten years (2010-20) of Fiji National University, from the perspective of a researcher who served as vice-chancellor from 2016-20.

Critical self-reflection as a research methodology has inherent weaknesses.  Unlike ethnographic methods which employ first-hand observation of participants, when the researcher is an active participant in events there is a natural tendency for him/her to interpret cause and effect in ways which overemphasise the significance of the actions taken or show the researcher in the best light.  However, when undertaken critically in a reflexive way which acknowledges and articulates the researcher’s own biases, this methodology offers a uniquely deep insight into the challenges of institution-building in a Pacific context.

The paper identifies a number of obstacles to executing the vision of a national university.  Some are common to the creation of new universities by merging smaller, constituent colleges which has taken place in other countries, notably the UK when the polytechnics were established in the 1970s.  These include forging a common organisational culture, upskilling or reskilling academic faculty for their new roles, and strengthening teaching and research without destroying earlier traditions of vocational training and employability.

Others are more specific to developing countries, which include the almost complete dependence on public funding to support operational and capital spending, as well as providing financial support for students.  This creates an acute financial vulnerability to a weakening of the fiscal position, which is exacerbated by the fact that the tax bases in many small island economies are heavily reliant on international tourism.  It also inevitably fosters an unhealthy dynamic between the university’s management and the government, on whose patronage the fortunes of the university’s finances rest.

Finally, it finds that some challenges are more distinctively Pacific, or even Fijian, in nature.  These include the bonds of kinship and respect for elders, which are often unacknowledged but sometimes in conflict with ‘imported’ management practices and even national legislation based on international ‘good practice’.  Ever present is the spectre of neo-colonialism, when the templates for organisational management and the benchmarks for success are uncritically adopted from the dominant Humboldtian model of higher education as a teaching-research nexus.  This threat is magnified by the pressure on newly-established universities to appoint senior academic managers trained outside the region, who unconsciously become a conduit for the transmission of Western academic values.

Fiji adalah salah satu negara dari banyaknya negara yang tersusun atas banyaknya pulau yang terbentang di atas bangsa kewilayahannya sendiri. Hal ini bukan selalu berdampak baik, karena dalam beberapa kasus tertentu, ruang dan waktu selalu menjadi masalah utama dalam proses distribusi apapun, termasuk pendidikan. Pendistribusian pendidikan yang tidak efektif mengakibatkan tidak meratanya pendidikan yang tersebar di negara tersebut, hal ini bisa berdampak pada adanya ketimpangan pendidikan. Untuk itu pendidikan terbuka dan jarak jauh dapat menjadi solusi yang bisa dilakukan guna memecahkan permasalahan ruang dan waktu dalam menempuh pendidikan. Khususnya di negara Fiji, pendidikan jarak jauh yang telah dikembangkan banyak sekali misalnya, the University of the South Pacific (USP) yang mengembangkan inovasi teknologi jarak jauh blended media dan e-library untuk pendidikan di perguruan tinggi dan di sejumlah pendidikan dasar hingga menengah juga dilakukan pendidikan jarak jauh berupa e-learning, sedangkan pendidikan terbukanya dilakukan melalui kebijakan pemerintah yang menerapkan sekolah gratis pada pendidikan sekolah dasar.

Dosen Pengampu :
Dr. Hj. Riche Cynthia Johan, S.Pd., M.Si.
Riche@upi.edu
Dadi Mulyadi, S.Pd, M.T.
Dadimulyadi@upi.edu

Program Studi Teknologi Pendidikan
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
2019.

This is a seminar presentation I delivered on November, 14, 2014. It discusses the findings of a research on ethnic and national identity among ‘mixed race’ persons of iTaukei and Indo-Fijian descent ("Part Indian-Fijians")

Thesis Abstract:
This explorative research provides an interpretive understanding of racial, ethnic, and national identity among ‘mixed race’ persons of Indian and Fijian descent in Suva, Fiji. This study was motivated by three research questions: (1) How do ‘mixed race’ Indian-Fijians identify themselves with an ethnic label or labels? (2) How do they identify with the term ‘Fijian’, given its recent institutionalization as a national identity construct? and (3) What do such experiences and views tell us about the racialization and politicization of identity in Fiji? Answers to these questions were interpreted from information generated during multiple individual and group interviews with ten ‘mixed race’ participants in Suva, who were accessed through the snowballing sampling method.

The study contributes to the discourse of identity in Fiji by presenting for the first time the experiences and opinions of being a ‘mixed race’ Indian-Fijian in a social context where political events and social structures have demarcated a set of dichotomized in-group and out-group relations and practices. It also contributes to the field of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) and to contemporary political debates in light of the underrepresentation of literature from the South Pacific region; the limited literature on ‘mixed race’ in Fiji; and the recent state policy to classify all citizens with the term ‘Fijian’. Based on the interviews conducted, this research demonstrates how the participants reinforced, resisted, and accommodated the social structures and discursive practices of identity in Fiji.

Video Recording of Presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ5YKGjgx6U

This is a presentation discussion on an explorative study being conducted in Fiji on ‘mixed race’ persons of iTaukei and Indo-Fijian descent. The study seeks to render an interpretive understanding of ‘mixed race’ ethnic and national identification based on interviews with participants in Suva, Fiji. The research questions are (a) how do persons of mixed parentage (iTaukei and Indo-Fijian) identify themselves with an ethnic label or labels? (b) what are the perspectives on the institutionalization of the term “Fijian” as a national identity label? (c) what do such experiences tells us about the racialization and politicization of ethnicity? This study is interesting and significant in light of the increasing number of ‘multiracial’ movements in Anglo-America; the small number of inter-marriages between iTaukei and Indo-Fijian citizens; and the recent policy change to identify all Fijian citizens with the term Fijian. The presentation covers the central aspects of research designs: the literature review (on Anglo-America & Fiji), conceptual framework, methodology, and the implications of this study.

This study seeks to understand variations in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) risk perception and sexual behaviour among male and female adults in Fiji. The Second-Generation Surveillance Report (2006) indicates the median age of first sex within the youth group as 16 years (range 10 – 23 years). Therefore, this study was purposively targeted at individuals of reproductive age, preferably 10 years and above. We utilized convenience sampling to collect 137 self-administered surveys from individuals working in both public and private sector organizations in two highly populated areas of Fiji. Independent samples t-test analyses revealed that men living in urban areas are more likely to experiment with multiple sexual partners, have a higher tendency of engaging in sexual practices, and are highly likely to have unsafe sex with multiple partners. Gender-sensitive interventions may help facilitate and achieve positive behaviour change among males and influence the sexual health of fem...

Australian lawyers often extol the virtues of the Torrens system as a means to secure property in land. Yet, the comparative evidence of benefits is mixed and context-dependent, particularly in terms of the nature, provenance and capacity of the state. This article analyses ways in which positivist land laws, including Torrens systems of title by registration, create legal understandings of property that are tied closely to projections or assumptions of state territorial authority. The intertwining of property and sovereignty constructs allodial conceptions of property based on possession or custom as subordinate, if not illegal, simply because they exist in social orders that lie beyond the administrative systems of the state. As a result, there is a chronic fragmentation of legal and social understandings of property in areas of the world with Torrens law and large numbers of informal settlements. The case studies include the Philippines and the Solomon Islands.

Global climate change scenarios are seen as future concerns, but this is not the case for the Pacific island countries and territories. The natural sciences have already built substantial knowledge about the oceanographic, geological and atmospheric processed associated with global warming and ocean change. Nonetheless, deep views from the social sciences, as well as legal perspective, need to be collected, analysed and executed, in order to know what happens when the climate change effects threaten the viability of sovereign states. Small island developing states contributed the least to global warming, yet they are suffering the most from its effects, while legal consequences of losing the most or all of their territory will lead those nations to the threat of losing sovereign status in the international arena. The
 
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Pacific Ocean, being the largest water basin on Earth, remains an isolated region in terms of geopolitics and research. This article is, therefore, a modest attempt to collect models and scenarios of the future of the Pacific states concerning their full existence as the equal legal entities, but also to present some international law proposals in this matter. Secondly, its goal is to sensitize European readers to certain issues of the geographically remote South Pacific, which might eventually affect all of us.

This research proposal presents  the purpose and its value of the topic mentioned above on Fiji's Chinese Language Teaching current situation and investigation research. This is the first draft written for the research proposal. The research will basically focus on three Institution (Primary school, High school and the University of the South Pacific Confucius Institute). The investigation conducted will be on the Chinese Language teachers, the leaners and the textbooks used for learning. The writer will also be giving some suggestions according to the problems been discovered during the research period.

Keynote address by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie at The University of the South Pacific Journalism Awards,19 October 2018, celebrating 50 years of the university's existence. Wide-ranging speech covers core values of journalism, global threats to journalists and press freedom, political leaders fueling "media phobia", the Jamal Khashoggi assassination in Turkey on 2 October 2018, Pacific media whistleblowers and the history of the University of the South Pacific journalism.

Scholars of religion and policy makers may be surprised at the changes occurring on the second largest island of the world that straddles one of the most Christianised and least Christianised areas of the world.

This book provides an accurate and deeper understanding of the nature of Islam in Papua New Guinea, and determines the causes and processes of recent growth in the country's Muslim population.

Combining ethnographic, sociological and historical approaches to understanding Islam's growth in Papua New Guinea, the book uses extensive fieldwork, interviews and archival records to look at the establishment, institutionalization and growth of Islam in a country that is predominantly Christian. It analyses the causes and processes of conversion, and presents a new analytical approach that could be used as a basis for analysing Islamic conversions in other parts of the world.

Presenting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Islamic conversion thorough the examination of the causes and process of Islamic conversion in Papua New Guinea, the book is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Religion, Islamic Studies, Cultural Studies, Strategic Studies and Security Studies.

Almost eight months after the much-heralded election to usher Fiji back into democracy mode, the country will mark World Press Freedom Day facing serious questions about its claims to have a free and fair media. The harsh 2010 Media Industry Development Decree is still a spectre. Although Fiji has produced marked improvements over the past year, recognised by global freedom organisations, many challenges lie ahead. The Multinational Observer Group’s final report on the September 17 election found the poll “credible” - as foreshadowed by its preliminary report in spite of critics' cries of “fraud”. However, last month’s report also offers a raft of recommendations for improvement, including the news media.

Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands, and its surrounding urban areas have the highest levels of population growth in the South Pacific, and the population could treble by 2050. Such rapid growth presents huge challenges, but also great opportunities. This report looks at how the people living in Honiara can manage growth and embrace urban opportunities. It considers possible pathways to enhance urban policy and governance; diverse partnerships across communities, sectors and levels of government; economic prosperity and livelihoods; and urban-rural linkages. The report draws on discussion groups across Honiara with residents in settlements, the private sector, planners, Guadalcanal province and youth groups; involving over 150 people.

This In Brief discusses contemporary land complexities in Solomon Islands with reference to land dealings around the capital city of Honiara. It provides a brief history of land in Honiara before discussing urban land use, planning, and development.

Honiara and its surrounding urban areas have the highest levels of population growth in the South Pacific, and the population could treble by 2050. Such rapid growth presents huge challenges, but
also great opportunities. This report looks at how the people living in Honiara can manage growth and embrace urban opportunities.

The Pacific Island region is a key context in the history of anthropology. Yet, while much has been written about how anthropology of the Pacific Islands contributed to Anglo‐American anthropology, the discipline's institutional history in the Pacific Islands has received very little attention. This paper is the first to explore the history of anthropology at the University of the South Pacific (USP). Research findings demonstrate that anthropology lacked practical meaning in an institution established to modernise Pacific Island states. Fieldwork conducted at USP suggests that current perceptions of anthropology held by academic staff are strongly linked to the discipline's classic era. I argue that the anti‐colonial version of the Pacific Way from the 1970s onward, coupled with the hegemony of political economist and anti‐culturalist approaches among the USP teaching staff in the 1980s, inhibited a meaningful engagement with the Writing Culture debate at USP. This may explain why there has been little influence by the discipline's postmodern transformation over the past thirty years on current perceptions of anthropology at USP. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12388

This paper focuses on the issue of national identity and culture. Its purpose is two-fold. Firstly, it explores the need for social learning through multicultural education in Pacific education systems. The discussion goes on to argue that an understanding of multiculturalism in education is important, given the increasingly diverse societies of PICs in the 21st century, as it enables children to see how diverse communities
(made up of many groups: religious, ethnic, etc.) can function through effective interaction and communication. It is based on the assumption that an education system which encapsulates social learning will ultimately better prepare students for their local and regional context as well as the globalised world into which they will soon emerge. Secondly, the paper discusses the use of a multiculturalist approach to curriculum development through the adoption of MC Ed, which could improve cross-cultural awareness and increased voluntary interaction through a better understanding of others in diverse communities.

As its title suggests, the book is a tribute to human rights in the Pacific but much more than this, it takes a critical look at the role of journalism in the scheme of things. With a career in journalism and teaching that spans 35 years, Professor Robie presents his journalistic adventures in the Pacific, capturing the struggles of the oppressed and the pivotal role that journalism can play to initiate positive change.