Graduation at Dauli Teachers College is a colourful event

Ian Stehbens, on May 27, 2007, said:

When I visited Dauli Teachers College for the first time (1995), it was to attend a graduation, which was intended to be the last, as the PNG government had received recommendations from an Australian led team of consultants who tried to tell PNG that they should do what Australia was doing about its tertiary education! What amazing stupidity and blindness. To shut down the smaller, more rural colleges and amalgamate in Waigani type intstitutions was crass madness. When Australia's average mean age was around 38, and PNG's was around 15; when Australia's mean age was getting older, PNG's was getting younger; when 80% of Australians lived in cities, and 80% PNG people lived in rural areas; when PNG was facing a looming HIV-AIDS crisis driven in large measure by urbanization. The rural colleges were places where the trainees still maintained the growing of gardens for food, and the urban colleges were entirely dependent on cash economy. The University at Waigani was certainly not a happy campus in those days and no one would want to replicate it at the expense of the smaller institutions. PNG needed teachers in every remote location while Australia needed its teachers for their inner city schools. Thankfully, we were able to convince the leaders of the PNG Education Department that day, that they were being misled by the Australian consultants who were borrowing their recommendations from a review of teacher education in Australia. And thankfully Dauli, Gaulim, Balob and others still operate.