A Close Look at Contributors to USP
Alot has been said about the Fijian Government’s role at the University of the South Pacific.
In fact, the Fijian Government is the largest contributor towards USP, financially.
It’s also a fact, that the return on this investment is higher - taking into account remittances and businesses generated while students are in Suva.
The table (Table 1), shows how each country has contributed for the past two years.
Out of $45.4million, Fijian Government contributed $34.4million. A further analysis of this show that Fiji contributes 76 per cent of the entire contribution as highlighted in the table (Table 2).
In 2019 tuition revenue for USP was $85.8million.
Out of this, $20m comes straight from the Fijian Government for the Toppers and Tertiary Education Loan Schemes (TELS).
When the TELS scheme was initially announced, it had been decided that the Fijian Government would give preference to students wanting to study at the Fiji National University. It was Rajesh Chandra who had then with his team negotiated with Fiji to give equal preference to students coming to USP.
What next?
If Fiji is still not comfortable with the direction USP is taking, one of the options it should look at closely is to have a policy whereby only those students who study at our own national university- Fiji National University will have their education funded through the Toppers and TELS programmes.