More bills for provinces under Feo’s higher education plan

by MICHAEL J. PASSINGAN

Higher Education Minister Kinoka Feo wants 500,000 tertiary places. The Unggai-Bena MP, who took the portfolio from Don Polye in July 2024, said this week the country has about 25,000 now, and that Gulf, Central, East Sepik and Oro have signed partnerships to take higher learning into the provinces. He tabled no budget, no timeline and not a single costed institution.

In May, breaking ground for a West Sepik college at Poro, Aitape, Feo spoke of 500,000 to 600,000 places. In 2021, DHERST's then acting secretary Francis Hualupmomi reported spaces had grown from 12,000 to 15,000, with a prime ministerial directive to reach 30,000 within five to ten years. Five years on, the minister's own count of 25,000 still falls short of that modest goal, and the goal has been multiplied more than sixteen-fold.

Five hundred thousand places, in programmes that mostly run three to four years, means between 125,000 and 167,000 new entrants every year. In 2025, more than 38,000 students sat Grade 12 exams, and national selection placed just over 23,000 for 2026. Admit every Grade 12 leaver in the country and the minister's campuses would still stand mostly empty. His own speech does not reconcile either: 35,000 students reaching higher education, in a system he says holds 25,000 places.

Of 427,000 children entering Grade 1, Feo says, only 35,000 reach higher education, a loss he described as human waste. Those children fall out at the Grade 8 and Grade 10 cut-offs, in schools run by the Education Department, years before any college gate. New seats at the top of a pipeline that leaks at the bottom will not recover them.

Provinces must now allocate land, fund their institutions and take ownership, Feo said, with the national government offering support rather than leading. That is decentralisation by press release: Waigani keeps the announcement, the provinces get the bill. West Sepik shows the going rate. At the Aitape ground-breaking, DHERST handed the provincial government a K1 million cheque. K1 million does not build a college.

Waigani already struggles to pay for the students it has. In December 2023 the government owed institutions K37 million in TESAS payments. In mid-2025, students approved for HELP loans were told to be patient while DHERST pressed the Department of Finance to release the money. A department that cannot pay on time for 25,000 places has no credible path to twenty times that number, least of all by shifting the cost onto Gulf, Central, Oro and East Sepik.

Feo also told his department to align national qualifications with global university rankings. Rankings score research output, citations and reputation. They are not a standard a qualification can be aligned to, and treating them as one suggests the quality agenda has not travelled far past the podium.

In December 2010, at a high school graduation in upper Bena, in what is now Feo's own electorate, Eastern Highlands' acting administrator warned that tertiary places were not keeping pace with school leavers. Sixteen years and several ministers later, the gap is still being answered with announcements.