Developing a Research Strategy for
UNITECH in the framework of the PNG Vision 2050
Presented at the 5th Research, Science
and Development Conference
Pacific Adventist University, Port
Moresby PNG, 25-29 June 2012
(Check against delivery)
Dr. Albert Schram
Vice-Chancellor
Papua New Guinea University of
Technology UNITECH
Introduction
The main purpose of this paper is to
show how a university can realize its mission more efficiently by
determining targets for a selected set of institution-specific
indicators in the framework of a strategy management system, such
as the balanced scorecard. These targets can be aligned with higher
level targets from the national planning efforts.
All universities in the world have
three general missions - teaching, research and community service. In
addition, universities have a specific mission which makes them
unique. For UNITECH this is "engendering critical evaluation and
application of science & technology for PNG and the South
Pacific".
Missions statements should describe
what organizations do, which is distinct from the final purpose or
outcome of these activities is different (Drucker 2006). The purpose
of teaching is learning, the purpose of research is generating new
knowledge, and the purpose of the third mission is different for each
university ranging from business goals, to more educational, social
or environmental goals. For UNITECH the purpose of critical
evaluation and application of relevant technology is to contribute to
the development of PNG in line with Vision 2050 national strategic
plan. In this paper, however, we will concentrate on the research
mission and its purpose.
The first qualification, I need to make
is that I can not yet present the indicator set created by UNITECH
Faculty and staff. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my
control the workshop in April and in June where this exercise was due
to take place, was postponed twice. The second qualification, is that
I don't want to suggest that indicators and numbers will solve PNG
higher education sector. Nowadays, in higher education there is much
attention for the plethora of university rankings and indicators. We
argue, however, in this paper that the transparency and balance
inherent in the BSC framework allows the production of meaningful
information about a university for appropriate assessments and
decisions (Kaplan and Norton 2007).
Most universities use series of key
performance indicators (KPI's) to measure the performance of the
organization. The BSC framework proposes to select a limited set of
20 or 25 indicators or so, which describe and are used to communicate
the game plan of the university. Although applications in the private
sector are more numerous, many universities use the BSC. With focused
investment, lots of talent and a capacity to retain it, innovation in
research and teaching, and effective strategic management some young
universities have managed to achieve in a matter of decades, what
European and US elite universities have developed over many
generation. We can observe this in the Times Higher Education ranking
of the top 100 universities under 50 years old (THE 2012). The cases
of Maastricht University (ranked 16, founded 1976), Macquarie
University (ranked 32 founded 1964), Wollongong (ranked 32 founded
1975) and Curtin (ranked 75, founded 1987) are remarkable because
they score high on the list and all have applied the BSC framework.
It seems, therefore, the BSC strategic management system has been a
useful tool for some of these universities.
When creating the balanced scorecard to
implement the strategy, each organization must chose its own
performance indicators matching its strategy, and its unique mission.
We will find that studying other examples will not help. An indicator
set that is both relevant and balanced, and is part of a periodically
revised strategic management system will produce the desired focus
and results.
The paper is divided into three
sections:
1- Higher Education in PNG at the cross
roads,
2- A research strategy for PNG
universities, and
3- Balanced indicators for research
performance.
Higher Education in PNG at a
cross roads
At independence in 1975, PNG inherited
a large physical university infrastructure, and a staff of ex-pat
academics, which it did not really know what to do with. As a
consequence, it never realized that in order to maintain this
intellectual and physical capital it had to be clear about its
dependence on foreign academics, and invest in the upkeep of its
physical capital. Despite attempts to plan for the higher education
sector, there was no real higher education policy. Most likely, in
the first decades after independence it had too many other
developmental challenges.
The lack of attention for higher
education policy is lamentable, because universities generate the
relevant knowledge which allow to develop primary and secondary
education, and train the teachers. In addition, lack of competent
doctors and engineers will not allow a country to maintain its health
system or physical infrastructure, on which the economy depends.
In 2009, UNITECH received a wake up
call when the Australian of Engineers evaluated technical education
in PNG. The main recommendation for UNITECH was to proceed towards
professional accreditation. This call for action was not heeded, and
instead a defensive approach was taken. The second call for action
came with the 2010 Independent Review of the PNG University System or
the Namaliu-Garnaut report. Initially, UNITECH again opposed, and
went public with it, but when it was accepted as government policy by
the National Executive Council, a part of the management started to
accept some of the notions hesitantly. Now IRUS has been accepted as
government policy, and all vice-chancellors in PNG have committed in
writing to make an effort towards international institutional
accreditation.
The authors of the IRUS deserve praise
for this courageous exercise, which not only brought to the
foreground some of the weaknesses of the PNG university system, but
also proposes some solutions. The report advocates a focus on
quality, and not quantity of graduates. After decades of break-neck
growth (over 10%, doubling student population every 7 years), the
university system is overstretched. Investments must be made to
rebuild the resources required for teaching and research. At this
point, it does not make any sense to increase student numbers even
further while not first address under-staffing, and quality
assurance.
Going for volume may be a viable
strategy in some businesses but it does not work in higher education.
Staff to student ratios would grow beyond any internationally
acceptable standard, physical infrastructure will explode out of its
seams, and completion rates of students would decrease noticeably.
Fortunately, since 2007 the state of PNG has invested in upgrading
teaching and research resources, and increased staffing ceilings,
although investment has been only about fraction of what is needed.
From their side, PNG universities need
to improve accountability and transparency by improving their
governance structure. In particular, the world record size of the
Council of over 30, needs to be reduced to a more management 12 or 15
in line with best-practice internationally. This will reduce the
number of Council members who were nominated for reasons not related
to their competences and are not contributing. Equally important this
measure will reduce costs.
According to these reports, a strong
focus is necessary on re-establishing the basic conditions for
teaching, research and running a university. In this day and age, and
especially when educating engineers, broadband internet is essential
for teaching, and more strongly so for research. You can not create
new knowledge if you do not have an idea what existing knowledge is
(Popper 1986). The only way to find out about the state-of-the-art,
is by accessing databases through the internet.
There are no justifications for not
linking up the oceanic and fiber optic cables which are now
monopolized by PNG Tellikom and PNG Power. The failure to do so the
last 10 years, has put PNG back 20 years in development. Broadband
internet has become essential for education, business and government,
and the failure to connect is a free ticket into the digital abyss.
Currently, for example, UNITECH has a satellite connection managing a
theoretical 2-5 Mb/s download speed, when not saturated as it is
during most of the business day. Nowadays, universities in the US and
Europe are managing 1 Tb/s which is 200.000 to 500.000 times quicker.
UNITECH's mission is to develop
teaching, research and community outreach of a high standard, and
specifically engendering critical evaluation and application of S&T
for PNG and the South Pacific. In its Vision 2030 document it
establishes three mid-term objectives: create post-graduate programs,
promote entrepreneurship, and increase externalisation. Currently, we
have set up task forces and teams for two of these three objectives.
UNITECH's Vision 2030 document links in well with PNG's Vision 2050.
Vision 2050 prioritizes some sectors for development, and allows for
an estimation of the man power needs.
The debate on higher education has been
framed as to focus the number of graduates, while their quality again
has been assumed. As the report of Engineers Australia and the
Namaliu-Garnaut report makes clear, however, the quality of the
graduates needs to be improved substantially. This will have an
effect on quantity, since completion rates will increase when quality
of teaching is improved. Therefore quality before growth, not after.
Soon we will have a new democratically
elected government in PNG, a new DG of OHE, new VC's at UPNG and
UNITECH, we have vibrant and growing private universities like PAU
and DWU. Let's not let this opportunity pass to create an adequately
staffed, financially sustainable and internationally recognized
university system in PNG.
A research strategy for
universities in PNG
Let's first consider the role of
research in modern universities. In Europe, the Lisbon goal of making
Europe the most competitive knowledge based economy in the world,
implies government and private sector need to invest at least 3% of
GDP in research, as the US, Korea and Japan have been doing. Without
a similar investment and a coordinated effort, technological
innovation will lag behind, and economic growth will diminish
further. The triple helix model, which means government, industry and
academia need to coordinate their efforts and investments (Jo Ritzen
2009). The life-long learning and the 7th Framework program (FP7) -
the largest research grant program in the world - contribute to a
coordinated and higher level of investment in research. The
Cooperation window in particular is geared towards producing research
results that can be applied in policy making or for developing
innovative and marketable products (Landry, Amara, and Ouimet 2007).
The FP7 program is open for researchers
of any nationality, and for any higher education institution in the
world. After all, talented researchers can be born anywhere in the
world, and with Europe's low population growth it needs to import it
as the US has been doing for over 50 years. It is therefore laudable
that a national contact point for FP7 has been created at OHE.
Apart from contributing to
technological innovation, which is what drives economic growth in
developed economies, universities have another important social
responsibility, which is to produce employable graduates (Schram
2010). In order to do this they have to prepare graduates for the
future, not for today's needs. It is therefore not sufficient to
replicate knowledge, but new knowledge needs to be continuously
created and integrated into teaching. This intimate connection
between research and teaching is what makes universities highly
relevant in society.
Conventionally research of an
international standard has the following characteristics:
a- undertaken or supervised by someone
who has proved his competency in research, a doctor,
b- global in nature and universal in
its application,
c- embedded in an ongoing discussion
among specialist,
d- published after anonymous peer
review,
e- harnessed for the public good by
cooperation with government and industry.
By this definition much of what is
presented at this conference, including this speech is not research,
and it does not matter. The spirit of research is very much present
here, all these researchers coming to present their findings, or
sometimes mere thoughts. This spirit of research will fuel the fire
which will eventually produce new valid and reliable knowledge, and
relevant technological innovation.
Balanced set of indicators in S&T
research
Stated in plain language, a possible
research strategy for any university in PNG is to:
- improve national coordination of
research efforts in key research areas,
- use existing resources more
efficiently and create some critical mass by cooperation,
- improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of national and foreign research grants,
- create partnerships with foreign
universities where they get access to our precious resources and we
get access to their research facilities (labs and libraries), and
- increase corporate sponsorship of
research.
In order to implement this strategy,
the challenge is to find a balanced set of lead indicators which
capture it, and make it possible to measure progress towards specific
targets. The indicators therefore need to be aligned with the
organization's goals, and progress needs to be review periodically in
order to improve continuously.
I proposed the Balanced Scorecard
framework as a conceptual framework for translating UNITECH's mission
and objectives into a set of performance indicators. The main
justification is that those young universities who have implemented
the BSC have managed to ascend in the rankings much quicker than
universities which did not.
How to find these lead indicators for
the BSC? First a strategy needs to be based on the organization's
mission, values, and vision. It is based on an idea of how to combine
inner strengths (business focus) and outward value proposition
(customer focus). It is a game plan, how to thrive and grow in a
challenging and changing environment. It is not a vision, a list of
intentions or wishes, or a any set key performance indicators (Rumelt
2011).
These selected indicators are
subsequently distributed among four perspectives, which capture the
key dimensions of the strategy (Kaplan and Norton 2007):
• financial (how do we look to the
principal stakeholders?),
• customer (how do our students see
us?),
• internal business processes (what
processes must we excel at?), and
• innovation and learning (how can we
continue to improve and create value?).
In a BSC framework, we distinguish
diagnostic indicators, lead indicators and lag indicators. Diagnostic
indicators provide information about the current state of the
organization. The lead indicators are those that drive the proposed
strategic change. The lag indicators provide information about the
desired results. For research, for example, a set of indicators could
be:
A- diagnostic indicators
- number of full-time Faculty with PhD
- number of PhD titles awarded
- number of Master degrees awarded
B- lead indicators
- number of months of mobilities in research
collaborations
- grant funding
- corporate or contract research
C- lag indicators
- number of articles published in peer review
media
- number of patents awarded
These indicators can be assigned to one
of the 4 perspectives. For each of these indicators an annual target
will be defined. In order for the UNITECH community to take ownership
of a set of indicators, and thus of the strategy, the inclusion of
some additional indicators and the setting of targets needs to be
done in a workshop. Furthermore, the final set of indicators need to
be checked for external and internal consistency. Are they aligned
with the strategic goal and objectives? Will the set of indicators
balance each other out so that too strong a focus on single indicator
is avoided?
Regarding implementation, change can
not be imposed from above on universities, as a recent episode of the
dismissal and subsequent re-instatement of the Vice-Chancellor at the
University of Virigina has shown. Most situations are in higher
education organizations are alignment situations, where processes
have to be aligned in order to reach strategic objectives efficiently
and effectively. When however a consensus arises that change is
necessary, a turn-around situation occurs. In those situations a
opportunities arise to change the strategic course of an organization
(Daly, Watkins, and Raevis 2006).
Conclusion
A BSC strategy management system can be
used to measure progress towards strategic targets, and has been used
by several young universities to advance substantially faster than
they would otherwise. The choice of a balanced set of lead indicators
is important, and is to some extent bottom-up. UNITECH will pioneer
this effort, and share the results with the higher education sector
in PNG. Each university, however, will need to select its own set of
indicators reflecting its specific mission and state.
The necessary laboratory resources for
simulation and experimentation are mostly lacking, and there is
insufficient access to literature databases. Major investment is
needed to remedy this, but in the mean time joint projects with
foreign researchers can help out.
The state of PNG needs to create the
basic infrastructure to do research, starting with broad band
internet. broadband internet is essential for education, research,
and business. The fibre optic cables are there, let's connect them!
Internet will improve communication among researchers, and will make
it easier to share resources with national and foreign researchers.
We need to better coordinate research
effort in PNG and break the barriers for cooperation. In an
hyper-connected world keeping information for yourself is not a
viable tactic. Sharing knowledge after all is multiplying knowledge,
and knowledge is power.
Producing valid and reliable knowledge
through research, and the capacity to engage in life-long learning
among our graduates will give us the proverbial long lever which can
move the country towards its Vision 2050 goals.
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———. 2007.
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