SOLOMON Islands Government gets a good return for its investment in the University of the South Pacific (USP), says USP’s Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Rajesh Chandra.
He made the comment during last week’s graduation in Honiara.
“Solomon Islands pays 7.8 percent of the government contributions, but has almost 16 percent of the enroled students,” he noted.
Professor Chandra said during the last triennium, Solomon Islands paid a total of F$11, 556,000 in government contributions but the University delivered direct and indirect benefits of almost F$16 million.
“Solomon Islands, therefore, gets a very good return for its investment in USP, and with the proposed new campus, the value delivered by USP will increase substantially as many more students study in Solomon Islands and as we locate many more academic and other staff at the new campus,” he said.
Professor Chandra highlighted that USP has also made considerable improvements to its IT services in the Solomon Islands.
“Earlier this year, the satellite bandwidth was increased by 50 percent and is planned to be increased by another 50 percent by the end of October, taking the capacity to 11.5 MHrtz. Next year we hope to increase it to 16.5 MHrtz,” he said.
“The real advance in bandwidth will come, however, when Solomon Islands connects to the marine fibre cable,” he noted.
“We hope that this will happen soon, and we look forward to providing first class bandwidth service to our students here as well as helping national educational institutions,” he added.
A total of 154 students graduated from the Solomon Islands Campus on 12 September 2014, an increase of 79 per cent from last year.