30/12/2020

Green University Rankings: Research Note 30 December 2020

Background

During the last decades, attempts to measure the performance of universities have multiplied. These performance scores, rankings, or league tables as they are called in the UK, are used by universities for their brand and reputation management, by students to determine their university choice, by academics to decide their career moves, and by several other stakeholders for different purposes.

Lately, there has been criticism of university rankings, mainly for not being well governed or transparent, and lacking rigor, as well as external validity (Gadd, 2021). We fully endorse their warning against the uncritical use of university rankings and research metrics in the higher education sector. The authors, however, based their arguments on deficiencies in the handling of data on research output, not in the lack of measurement of universities teaching performance or other activities. In order to address this, we argue that considerable additional efforts must be made to harmonize teaching effectiveness and outcome measures. 

18/12/2020

Three Myths about Papua New Guinea’s Development

Background

UNESCO’s latest report Global Education Monitoring Report: Inclusion and education – All means all (2020) sheds more light on the global learning crisis. In the Global South an insufficient number of children finish primary and secondary school, and many when they are able to go to school, learn almost nothing. The Brookings Institution, for example, famously pointed out that developing countries are 100 years behind in terms of providing access to schooling as compared to industrialized countries (Winthrop & McGivney, 2016). Similarly, the OECD’s PISA for development show dismal learning outcomes for 15-year-old in reading, maths, and science in the participating developing countries (OECD, 2020).

This year’s UNESCO report includes an analysis of school completion rates in Papua New Guinea (see below), made possible by the recently published 2016-18 Papua New Guinea Demographic and Health Survey (PNG DHS 2016-18). For the first time in November 2019, Papua New Guinea (PNG) made all the data available for researchers. The survey was implemented by the National Statistical Office from October 2016 to December 2018 and included 16,021 households (15,198 females and 7,333 males from 15 to 49 years old) across the country. Since the male sample may suffer from selection bias (e.g. overrepresentation of unemployed males), the data for females are deemed more reliable.

16/12/2020

Papua New Guinea: Failure to Develop or Developing to Fail – a rejoinder

Background

Last Tuesday 15 December 2020 the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published the 30th edition of the Human Development Report (HDR) containing its development statistics for 2019. Here we wish to assess long-term economic and education development in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in comparison with neighbouring Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and with its large Asian neighbours which have been successful in dealing with their development challenges: Indonesia, India and China. 

PNG's ranking last year was 156th, and this year’s is 155th, placing it at the bottom of the "medium human development" category, with 34 of the total of 189 countries doing worse. Changes in composite indices, however, are tricky to interpret, and looking at constituting factors may be more useful for distilling policy recommendations.

29/11/2020

E learning @ Unitech

A journey into the digital abyss

Pundits have fretted for a long time about the widening digital divide between the high and low-income, or developing countries. Some have compared the introduction of internet to the revolution brought about by the invention of writing and the printing press, and are worried that a large part of the low-income countries are missing out. Internet literacy became just as important as conventional literacy.

Although the mobile technology digital divide has been closed (The Economist 2005), there is a need to close the broadband digital divide. Universal, unlimited broadband internet brings numerous direct and indirect benefits, which selectively available, pay per megabyte, slow and unreliable internet can never produce. Broadband internet has the potential to create whole new sectors in the economy (VOX 2011). In high-income countries, broadband access is available anywhere for less than $30 per month, in low-income countries similar access costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month.

14/05/2020

The Australian 30 May 2018: Albert Schram says PNG universities face crisis

(This is now 2 years ago. Case was thrown out in January 2019 for lack of any evidence. Here is the record of my PhD. It was all madness.

University governance is still thoroughly politicized and ignores students needs. All academics in #PNG with experience working in world-class universities have left, academic quality improvements have stopped, internet at UNITECH has collapsed, and crisis is tangibly upon these universities.

University management and Council were all appointed by Peter O'Neill.)


Albert Schram, former vice-chancellor of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology.




Albert Schram, former vice-chancellor of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology.
Albert Schram, the former vice-chancellor of Papua New Guinea’s second largest university, has warned that the country’s higher education system will face crisis unless corruption is rooted out and threats against foreign academics cease.
Dr Schram was speaking from Singapore, where he landed on Sunday. The PNG authorities allowed him leave the country after arresting him and confiscating his passport earlier this month.

Dr Schram, whose leadership of the PNG University of Technology is praised by Australian academics who follow the country, was controversially ousted as vice-chancellor in February after being accused of not verifying his PhD credentials, even though his 1994 doctorate from the European University Institute in Italy has been thoroughly verified.

The Australian 18 May 2018: PNG Vice-Chancellor Albert Schram charged with ‘false pretence’

(Here is what Australians read about the PNG universities. This is now 2 years go.

There has never been any evidence for the charge of 'false pretence', and the other allegations were slanderous and trumped up. If not, I would have been charged. 

Anybody can see my PhD is genuine, and in fact, I continue to work in higher education at the University of Maryland Global Campus, a US-based university with a campus in Italy.

The case was thrown out of court for lack of evidence in January 2019, but not without further threats from the police judge.

Meanwhile, nobody has gotten in touch with me, or apologized. AS)



Albert Schram, former vice-chancellor of the PNG University of Technology.
Albert Schram, former vice-chancellor of the PNG University of Technology.
Albert Schram, the respected former vice-chancellor of Papua New Guinea’s second largest university, was arrested last week when he re-entered the country and now cannot leave because his passport has been confiscated by PNG authorities.