Rocky times are not over yet for the University of the South Pacific (USP).
By next month, its life as a leaner higher learning institution will officially begin.
This reflects urgent efforts to restructure it and save it from what might have been a very perilous journey.
In an information update emailed to USP staff, Vice-Chancellor Dr Rajesh Chandra said the USP Council—the governing body of the regional university—approved the restructure proposal during its 67th meeting in October in Suva, Fiji.
“The council approved the proposed academic restructuring and termination of 98 chronically undersubscribed courses as approved by the USP Senate.
“In approving these changes, the council was encouraged that a deeper analysis of all the programmes offered by the university was underway as a priority in 2009,” said Chandra.
From next month, USP will operate as a three-faculty institution instead of four and the change is expected to save it F$350,000 in staff costs alone.
“The four faculty structure was adopted in 2005 and since then, it has become clear that this academic arrangement is not as sustainable and cost effective as originally envisaged,” said Chandra in his faculty restructure paper to the USP Council.
An assessment that followed revealed the need to bring the faculty numbers down to two but “was seen by the Senior Management Group (SMG) as extreme”. Hence, the compromise on three faculties as the “best option”.
The two faculties identified as being “viable on their own” were the Faculty of Business and Economics and the Faculty of Science and Technology, while a third faculty is to result from the merging of the Faculties of Arts and Law and Islands and Oceans.
Chand said in his paper that following extensive consultations with faculty staff, heads of schools and heads of divisions on just how to merge the two faculties, several possible scenarios emerged and were discussed and debated.
The result? Three new faculties to be operational from next month would be the Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE), Faculty of Arts and Law (FAL) and the Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment (FSTE). For the sake of effective profiling and marketing, USP is doing away with the word “department” and will instead adopt the words “schools” and “divisions” to describe faculty arrangements.
FBE will have seven schools – the school of Accounting and Finance, School of Economics, School of Management and Public Administration, Graduate School of Business, School of Governance and Development Studies, School of Tourism and Hospitality Management and the School of Agriculture and Food Technology.
FAL’s six schools will be: School of Education, School of Law, School of Language, Arts and Media Studies, School of Social Sciences, Oceania Centre for Arts & Culture and Pacific Studies and an Institute of Education. FSTE – the new third faculty – will comprise the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, School of Engineering and Physics, School of Computing, Information Systems & Mathematical Sciences, School of Islands and Oceans, Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development and the Institute of Applied Sciences.
While this structure lays out USP’s academic operation in simple terms, it is geared mainly to streamline the three faculties to create better synergies within them and to maintain cost effectiveness in the running of the institution.
It is a response to the shaky financial situation that USP had found itself after Chandra’s predecessor, Professor Anthony Tarr, prematurely ended his three-year term as Vice-Chancellor in 2006, a year before his contract was to expire.
Chandra, who now has a financially stressed university to run, gave a rundown on what stakeholders were looking at in his presentation to the October USP Council meeting.
“The council is now fully aware of the deterioration in the finances of the university since 2004: compared with a surplus of about F$3 million in 2004, the university had a deficit of F$5.1 million in 2006 and F$2.3 million in 2007,” he said.
“The 2008 budget had initially projected a deficit of F$1.4 million. These deficits were financed from our recurrent reserves, which have now been exhausted. This is of major concern because there is no cushion for the university in the event of any shortfall.”
A significant redeployment of existing resources therefore was required, he added, as contributions from USP’s 12 Pacific islands government members, which form the bulk of its annual revenue, would remain at the same level as their 2008 contribution.
This, Chandra added, meant USP will have to finance the cost of inflation on its own and the cashflow problem expected at the year-end and well into next year underscored the need to re-look at the way things are done at the university.
Apart from the resulting restructure of faculties and removal of under-subscribed courses, other measures include a moratorium placed on new courses and a general freeze put on filling staff vacancies “except where urgently needed”.