It is time the new team is given all the support to put the lustre back for perhaps no other institution is as important as the university when it comes to the prosperity and well-being of future generations of Pacific islanders’


Good sense seems to have finally prevailed upon the powers that be at the region’s largest and most respected tertiary institution.

After a series of appalling decisions that brought the University of the South Pacific teetering on the brink of financial disaster, its management has now entrusted the helm to an experienced old hand—Professor Rajesh Chandra.

Forced out of the running for the vice-chancellor’s position three years ago—following the premature death of his boss Savenaca Siwatibau—for motives that could only have been ulterior as one can surmise in retrospect, Professor Chandra is perhaps the most experienced administrator the university can fall back on at this time.

His knowledge and experience will indeed stand him in good stead in the extremely difficult tasks of recouping and shoring up the institution’s finances while simultaneously regaining the lost confidence of all of its stakeholders—from regional governments, donor agencies, partnering peer institutions and students right down to the large pool of disaffected academic staff, managers and employees which are the real assets of any tertiary educational institution.

It is unfortunate that in the past three years, the university, which ironically runs the only substantial institute dedicated to good governance in the region fell victim to a series of disastrous decisions by its leadership and top management that struck at the very heart of the basic principles of good governance.

The university’s top management—led by a vice-chancellor who headed the institution briefly before quitting in an unseemly hurry—can be blamed for almost every ill it currently suffers from.

The opaque, totalitarian-style leadership led the region’s only truly hallowed institution down a destructive path of bad investment decisions into areas educational institutions seldomly venture, huge upward revisions in salary structures of senior academics, stark nepotism and cronyism in appointing family and friends to sensitive positions or creating entirely new organisational structures for them, and so on.

The management, which was given free rein by the university’s council for reasons best known to itself, piled up gigantic bills culminating in the university posting a loss of F$3 million in 2006. It had to draw upon its reserves to pay salaries—something that it had never done in its small but checkered history.

New projects included investments in a number of areas including a software subsidiary headed by expatriates on huge salaries, which had to be written off after a parasitic existence of just over a year. It was all a terrible blow on the confidence that not just its paying member nations but also the 18,000 students had reposed on it.

What complicated these sweeping changes, however, was that they unfortunately coincided with the considerable structural alterations that the university was going through according to a schedule that was drawn up much before the advent of the said management.

That restructure in itself may well be irreversible but the new management team will undoubtedly have the difficult task of reversing many of the decisions that had been taken in the short, turbulent stint of the previous management.

And that includes the huge salaries that were paid to the newly appointed deans and other senior academic and corporate world style management staff, some of them drawing nearly F$250,000. The ostensible reason then was that the newly formed faculties needed to be self sufficient and needed experienced expatriate managers employed at high salaries to achieve those goals.

That clearly has not eventuated and the management has no alternative but to slash these emoluments to sustainable levels, something which it has already announced it will do. It might also have to cull unproductive managers and rethink ways of making the faculties self-sustaining, according to the new restructure plan.

Whether that will trigger an exodus of senior staff remains to be seen. But it is a risk the new management led by Chandra has no choice but to take.

Having been leaderless for over a year as the council went through the expensive and time consuming rigmarole of finding a suitable candidate to take charge of the meandering colossus, affairs at the institution have continued to deteriorate. Students have agitated against the alleged high handedness of the management and major donor-intensive technology projects either been long delayed or if not completely stalled.

The new management has its work cut out for it. But before it can even think of any forward planning for the institution, it must deal with clearing the mess created by the self serving shortsightedness of the previous management that has left ample proof of what bad management practice and poor governance can do to the perfectly healthy finances of a well run institutional behemoth like the University of the South Pacific in so short a time.

We hope the council and all those forces that wholeheartedly supported the previous management in its financial misadventure by first appointing it and then giving it a free hand to run the affairs of the institution will learn from its unfortunate mistakes.

The new management must be given all the support it will need to put the institution’s finances on the road to health and to regain the confidence of its diverse stakeholders.

For its leadership, unlike the immediately preceding one—which had all the trappings of the typical white knight who comes to the islands guns blazing and draining them of their resources before quitting as quickly—is now under the stewardship of an insider who has studied, taught and even helped lead the institution for several decades and has an intimate knowledge of its history and systems.

The University of the South Pacific is a jewel in the crown of the Pacific Islands’ many regional organisations that unfortunately lost its lustre in the past few years. It is time the new team is given all the support to put the lustre back for perhaps no other institution is as important as the university when it comes to the prosperity and wellbeing of future generations of Pacific islanders.