The University of the South Pacific (USP) is working with industrial corporate partners to address what is calls the dearth of people with doctoral degrees (PhD) in the country.

This has been revealed by USP Vice Chancellor Professor Pal Ahl­uwalia to members of the media during a lunch organised by the university.

“It is my ambition that the engine room of research is the PhD,” Pro­fessor Ahluwalia said.

“We do not have enough PhDs in Fiji.

“The Fiji Government has also said its ambition is to grow the number of people with PhDs in the country because we operate in the 21st Century in a global economy and we need people with PhDs with relevant skill sets.

“We are going to double the num­ber of PhDs in this university and a lot of it will be done in co-operation with our industrial partners.”

Professor Ahluwalia confirmed that he had productive meetings with the USP’s business partners who made commitments to provide scholarships for the programme.

“What they will do under the pro­gramme is our scholars will spend half the time in the industry and half the time in the university,” Professor Ahluwalia said.

“This is so that they are solving industry problems, but at the same time they are doing cutting-edge re­search which is vital to the univer­sity’s reputation going forward.”

USP currently has 26,000 students, 19,000 of whom are full time stu­dents.

Edited by Epineri Vula

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