‘Sooner rather than later, it (council) will have to go through the expensive rigmarole of finding a new vice chancellor. This time the council will have to be extra vigilant of candidates who promise the moon for the price of one’


The region’s premier tertiary institution, the University of the South Pacific, is clearly in for some testing times ahead. In a rapidly developing sequence of events beginning late February, its Vice Chancellor quit his job way ahead of the end of his very first contract. Soon afterwards a set of leaked documents implicating the senior management’s complicity in some irregularities began making the rounds.

The leaked documents were at first dubbed false by the acting Vice Chancellor, Dr Esther Williams, in an email message dated March 20 sent to all staff members. The documents have brought into the public eye things that have been openly talked about in the institution’s circles for months now. The leak has opened a veritable, tightly packed can of worms in full public view.

A meeting called by the staff association late last month unanimously (quite uncharacteristic for an academic institution!) resolved to seek unambiguous answers from the management as regards the university’s financial position.

The leaked salary slips revealed the disproportionately high compensation structure of the university’s top management and the relatively newly-appointed Deans who function as heads of faculties under the new restructure of the university.

The vice chancellor’s package of a whopping F$470,000 tax free—thanks to a hard-to-explain waiver granted by the previous government—is bound to be investigated by the Fiji interim administration. A number of allegations of a personal nature has also been levelled against the vice chancellor whose sudden exit ostensibly was for ‘family reasons’.

In past months, the university’s management sought to justify the high salaries of the top brass and academic heads on the grounds that under the new restructure, the faculties had to be financially independent and needed highly capable people at the helm. The high compensation packages were supposed to have been designed to attract the best in the business.

But the staff association is unsure this has happened. It has resolved to ask the university to re-look at the restructure and also demanded full financial information and data on the profitability of what the restructure has brought about in the faculties under their highly paid heads.

Last year, the university had to dip into its reserves to fund the rise in salaries despite there being no reduction in member countries’ annual contributions to its coffers. It is however not known to what extent this has depleted the institution’s reserves.

In their quest for profitability, many faculties have cut back on junior teaching staff like tutors and frozen new recruitments, thus putting students at a disadvantage. USP also raised tuition fees this academic year and toyed with the idea of charging students a monthly fee for services like Internet usage. All cost-cutting measures have been targeted at students while there was no talk of any roll back on the substantial packages of the men and women at the helm of USP.

USP is one of the region’s most important institutions particularly because it has the future of the entire region at stake. It is charged with almost single-handedly producing the region’s future leaders, bureaucrats, civil servants and professionals. It has performed commendably since its inception in 1968, serving its member nations well. But now its reputation as a well-run institution is under question.

It is ultimately the university’s council that must own up responsibility for its current state of affairs. For it is the council that selected the vice chancellor from among a number of able and proven list of candidates—one of them with rich management and academic experience from within the institution itself. It must have had its reasons for going ahead with that appointment—and nobody questions its right to do so—but it has been proved wrong in its judgment. Resoundingly.

Yet the vice chancellor’s sudden exit indicates the council was told of the goings-on and made the required moves to stem the rot as quickly as it could when an audit reportedly revealed a number of financial irregularities. It took the necessary step without further delay, well before its affairs took a turn for the worse.

It has its task cut out for itself. First, it must now come clean on the extent of the damage to the university’s finances and the truth or otherwise of the growing pile of allegations against its management and former leader.

Sooner rather than later, it will have to go through the expensive rigmarole of finding a new vice chancellor. This time the council will have to be extra vigilant of candidates who promise the moon for the price of one!

It must be bold enough to examine if the restructure has really worked—and take immediate steps to set things right if it has not. And it must not hesitate to rationalise the high management remuneration if it is found to be a stumbling block to the cost-efficient delivery of education.

After all, its most important stakeholder and its very raison d’etre is the student.

It will then have to work hard with the new incumbent to put the lustre back into the hallowed institution and set its finances, academic and management processes right, winning back the confidence of its aggrieved student community, disaffected academic class and its funding nations, not to mention the larger world.

When the council meets next in May, it must endeavour to do everything it can to choose the right path at this most crucial crossroad in the institution’s short but eventful history.