PNG’s New Scholarships Sound Good — But Are Our Universities Ready?

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By Bernard Yegiora

PNG’s decision to offer scholarships to students from Solomon Islands and Vanuatu appears, at first glance, to be a positive step in regional diplomacy. It signals goodwill, leadership, and people-to-people engagement. But beneath the surface, the policy exposes a deeper structural problem: PNG is expanding scholarships while its universities lack the academic capacity to sustain quality.

PNG’s government announces a new scholarship programme for students from Vanuatu and Solomon Islands—an ambitious regional diplomacy move that raises important questions about university capacity, academic quality, and the long-term strategy for higher education internationalisation.

The issue is not generosity. It is readiness.

I am currently undertaking PhD research in International Relations, a subfield of Political Science. Yet I do not have access to a Papua New Guinean PhD-qualified mentor in Political Science or International Relations who is actively publishing in national or international journals or engaged in sustained research. This is not a personal grievance. It reflects a systemic gap in PNG’s higher-education ecosystem.

PNG does not just lack PhDs; it lacks research-active PhDs.

There is no national database showing how many Papua New Guineans hold PhDs and are actively publishing, supervising research, or contributing to international scholarship. DHERST cannot say, with confidence, how many research-active PhDs exist in Anthropology, History, Political Science (including International Relations), Economics, or Business Studies. Policy is therefore being formulated without an empirical foundation.

From what is visible across PNG universities, the number of Papua New Guinean PhDs who are research-active in Anthropology, History, and Political Science is likely extremely small—possibly in single digits nationwide. Some are approaching retirement. Others are absorbed into administration or have exited academia altogether. A PhD without ongoing research activity does little to strengthen teaching quality, mentorship, or institutional reputation.

These disciplines matter. Anthropology, History, and Political Science form the intellectual backbone of governance, diplomacy, foreign policy analysis, and national identity. Weak capacity in these areas undermines PNG’s ability to internationalise its universities and to credibly host students from the region.

This reality demands a reset in scholarship policy.

Expanding undergraduate and master’s scholarships—whether sending PNG students abroad or hosting regional students—without first strengthening the academic workforce is strategically unsound. Scholarships do not internationalise universities. Academics do. Without research-active PhDs, universities struggle to deliver quality teaching, supervision, and scholarship.

My advice to government is direct: work with Australia and other partners to prioritise in-country or overseas PhD scholarships for academic staff in higher education institutions only. Undergraduate and master’s scholarship expansion should be reduced or paused, with resources redirected toward doctoral training in STEM, Business Studies, Economics, Anthropology, History, and Political Science (including International Relations).

One research-active PhD academic has a multiplier effect—teaching hundreds of students, supervising theses, publishing research, mentoring junior staff, and building international networks. That is long-term national capacity. By contrast, mass undergraduate scholarships generate visibility but little institutional depth.

DHERST should also urgently establish a national register of research-active PhD holders, including those in the diaspora, disaggregated by discipline and institutional affiliation. Without this, internationalisation remains rhetorical. With it, PNG could strategically deploy expertise and genuinely support students from Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

What makes this more troubling is that higher education internationalisation is largely absent from the new Foreign Policy White Paper. Education diplomacy is being pursued without serious alignment to academic capacity, exposing a disconnect between the Department of Foreign Affairs and DHERST.

If PNG wants to be taken seriously as a regional education hub, it must first invest in its academics. Scholarships should follow capacity—not substitute for it. Until research-active doctoral pipelines are built, we are funding movement rather than building universities.

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