MAJURO — Following the Ministry of Education’s refusal to sign a new agreement with a college-prep program operated by the University of the South Pacific here, the Cabinet has taken authority away from the ministry and signed a four-year extension.
Expanding ties with the Fiji-based University of the South Pacific is a key goal of the top leadership in the Marshall Islands.
Tadashi Lometo, Minister in Assistance to President Kessai Note, said Friday that the main “reason to have the Office of the President to be responsible for the relationship with the USP program is that USP is a very important institution in the region.”
At a meeting earlier this month, the Cabinet voted to move authority for the education program to the Office of the President and followed this decision by agreeing to a new, four-year extension with the University of the South Pacific that operates a program known as the Republic of the Marshall Islands/USP Joint Education Project.
The agreement will provide $200,000 annually for the program that provides college-prep courses for 12th grade students and high school graduates in an effort to prepare them for off-island colleges.
An earlier memorandum of understanding with USP for operating the program had expired early this year and USP and Ministry of Education officials had been negotiating a new agreement. But while USP wanted a four year extension, the Ministry wanted just a two year agreement, according to Secretary Biram Stege. She said she wanted an extension limited to two years with provisions for an evaluation of the results of the program.
Education officials also disagree with the level of funding for the USP-operated program, saying it is unfair to be giving this program eight times the per-student funding of the government’s own secondary schools.
According to Ministry of Education officials, when the program started in the mid-1990s and the ministry objected to the cost of the program at the time, the Office of the President promised to assist with funding but then didn’t deliver. Later, USP presented the ministry with a bill for more than $200,000 due to USP for its early years of operation. The Ministry was proposing that a portion of the proposed $200,000 annual funding figure be used to pay off the previous debt a little each year.
“The ministry wouldn’t sign because it’s too much money,” Stege said.
“Our own teachers aren’t being paid (properly), there’s no money for text books, and school buildings are falling down.”
Last year, the RMI/USP Joint Education Project received $279,995 for approximately 50 students, an average of $5,599.90 per student. In contrast, the Ministry of Education said it was able to spend only $862.78 spent per student at Marshall Islands High School, the main government secondary school in the nation.
Stege said the focus needs to be on putting resources into fixing Marshall Islands elementary schools. “If students have poor foundation skills, it doesn’t matter what high school they go to,” she said. “We need to improve our own institutions.”
Irene Taafaki, who directs the Majuro USP extension center — which operates independently from the RMI/USP Joint Education Project — signed the extension agreement on behalf of USP with Lometo.
She said that the agreement, which approved the USP-proposed four year extension, through 2006, means that the program will have performed 10 years of education work in the Marshall Islands when the new agreement ends. “It’s a better period of time to assess progress,” she said of the 10 year period.
Lometo said the Marshall Islands would like to see USP establish a northern campus to offer four-year degree courses in Majuro. USP currently operates a center that offers a limited number of courses, as it does in its member countries in the Pacific region. The government-funded College of the Marshall Islands is a two year community college program in Majuro.
This proposal for a four year college campus is being made to USP officials and will be followed up personally by President Note when he visits Fiji next month for a high-level European Union meeting, Lometo said. “We want this to happen,” Lometo said of an expanded USP presence in the Marshall Islands.
“With USP on board, we can offer more opportunities for our people,” Lometo said. “More higher education institutions in the Marshall Islands mean more people have an opportunity to continue on without having to go off-island.”
While it may seem that the government is helping USP more than its own schools, Lometo said “the way we look at it, we’ve been getting productive results from USP.”
