Today, I follow up on the issue I discussed last week concerning the lack of space in tertiary
institutions for majority of our Grade 12 Leavers each year.

The lack of access to education (and not just post-secondary education), is a national problem. It has
been with us for as long as our hundreds and hundreds of fragmented traditional tribal societies came
together as a nation and began modernizing and accepted modern ways like classroom education.
Our path to modernization was never easy from the start. It is still not easy today, given our country’s
geographical composition, the indifferent interests of colonial powers to advance our cause and our self-
inflicted ineptitude in the years after independence in 1975 with scourges such as corruption chewing up our
meagre public funds that would otherwise have been used to advance education for the majority.
It is on historical record that the education of the indigenous population of the Papua New Guinea
in the early years met mixed responses from our colonial mentors – some felt we were not ready
or we were not human enough to receive ‘modern’ education and be at the same table as the
‘white man’ otherwise felt we be educated early. The overt demonstration of this colonial mindset
was the many accounts of segregation of our people, whom the colonisers labelled as “natives”,
on the basis of their skin colour during the pre-independence years. Therefore, the promotion of
education of the local population in our early years before World War II and soon after the War
were mixed in terms of the interests of the colonial mentors.
It was the global peace-building efforts after the War, particularly the creation of the United Nations,
the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development or World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund that triggered a serious bid for decolonization and development of the ex-colonies. We
were, at the tail end of the strong push for decolonization at the UN in the 1950s and throughout the
1960s. This decolonization momentum in the UN propelled the haste in which our colonial mentors
began to provide education and other services and development notably in the 1960s and upwards.
A serious bid for self-determination ensued, when the likes of Mr Michael Somare (now Sir) who
entered our embryonic national politics during the second national election in 1968 and began
talking decolonization even though much of the country remained without education and other
social services and development of critical public infrastructures.
Given that decolonization was already high on the UN agenda throughout the 1960s, the push for
self-determination by Somare and company received support from New York and Canberra.
While independence was coming with such haste at the start of the 1970s, our people and the
development of a country was still lagging behind. The colonial administration did its level best to
hasten development, built the first two universities in the late 1960s and their first university graduates
came out at the start of the 1970s. These early graduates of the 1970s would go on to localize most of
the senior positions in government held by Australian public servants but there was still more educated
manpower needed in the rest of the country when independence finally arrived on 16 September 1975.

Freeze frame and look back at what happened over the last 45 years and as I said last week, our
country led by the State (or Government) did not invest enough in post-secondary education to
keep pace with the growth in population and the size of the economy.
We could have done more, but we did not. Even if we had built more universities and colleges across the
country, there are other factors we had to consider in areas the economics of scale of having more post-
secondary education services. Looking at the matter more broadly, our economy cannot sustain too many
universities and colleges that it cannot fund their upkeep but we have not arrived at the right mix yet. That is
to say, how many universities and colleges do we need for the foreseeable future to claim that we are
providing enough post-secondary education opportunities for the majority of our young people?
By and large, the fact still remains that all countries of the world have not been able to provide universal
post-secondary education for all their citizens. It is just not possible, due to many factors, some of which are
personal factors involving the individual and family circumstances of each potential student.
What I can safely say is that tertiary education including university education is not everyone’s
cup of tea. Some people would naturally be intuitive towards on-the-spot skills development and
making a living out of it. Take for example music making where some of our youths are becoming
so good at even without attending a music school in a university or college but by being self-
thought with the help of the capabilities of information and communication technology that is out
there. If that is what some of our young people are satisfied with and have found a niche, they
should be commended and supported. They must not be ridiculed as wasting time on
‘entertainment’ and not being serious about life. These creative minds should not be accused of
wasting time making music with claims that they are better off pursuing university degree.
The same can be said about our young people who are interested in their skills-based ambitions in the
arts and sports. Such young people must be supported since that is where their interest is and they are
likely to excel in. The State (our government) must have a system in place to support our creative
young people in the arts and entertainment areas so their skills are enhanced and creative work is
safeguarded and they receive just rewards for their works. When the State does this, it will be creating
an economic avenue for many of our young people to go there to be empowered and productive and
not be frustrated that they were failures who could not make it to university.
What am I saying? My point is lead our young people to look at alternative ways of being viable
members of our society. Make our young people understand that this does not happen only after a
university degree or a college diploma. We need a complete mindset shift to appreciate that university
and college education is for some while others can be engaged in the creative industries or pursue
other callings in life that one can do something by intuition, interest or by emulating what role models
are doing out in the PNG society or as publicized on Facebook and the Internet.
The question is whose job is to educate our children and parents that there are alternative endeavours
to pursue in life than university or college education. University or college education is just only one
way of making ends meet. Remember, our ancestors before the arrival of the white man led productive
lives in our villages living in harmony with nature without university or college education. This will be
my topic of discussion next week. See you then. If you have any suggestions for topics or queries
about the topics I have written in the past, send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.