| Papua New Guinea's push into the 21st century market economy places considerable demand on its four publicly funded universities—i.e., Papua New Guinea University of Technology, University of Goroka, University of Papua New Guinea, and the University of Vudal to articulate their programs and course offerings with the needs and priorities of the state's development objectives. Nationally, universities' achievements in the educational fields of agriculture and fisheries, infrastructure and manufacturing, medicine, environment, business management and teacher training have been of particular interest to state planners and the employment market.; Although it is difficult to measure the extent of the four universities' productivity, generally institutional responsiveness varies in degree of emphasis and continuity. The PNG situation between the 1997–2001 period showed three important aspects of universities responses to modernization and institutional outputs. First, they are involved in professional development in the seven educational fields. Taken individually, only the Papua New Guinea University of Technology is involved in purely technological training and the University of Goroka in secondary teacher preparation and certification. The University of Vudal offers only agriculture education and the University of Papua New Guinea offers broad-based courses in the sciences, humanities and medicine. Secondly, all universities are realigning their institutional missions with the requirements of the employment market and employing varying degrees of rational strategic planning models to establish individual advantages in bleak economic times. This allows them to meet their mission objectives with some sense of purpose, understand institutional relationships to the larger environments and giving some attention to measuring effectiveness and improving the quality of their programs. Thirdly, there are varying forms and degrees of determining the external forces which trigger the need for modernization and for articulating program expectations of multiple and diverse constituencies. Still, the single most serious impediment to universities accountability have been the weakness in providing the information about the inputs and outputs of the educational production process and to outcomes at the institutional and the national levels. The present initiatives on linking with the market sector can usher the universities and higher education towards performance based behavior. |
