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The removal of the scaling system and the decision to allow students to advance to the next class regardless of their performance are blamed for the declining quality of graduates.

University of the South Pacific Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Education Professor Jito Vanualailai believes the universities started facing quality issues after a political decision to lower entry requirements.

Professor Vanualailai says removing the scaling system has lowered the standards in the education sector.

“The most stupid thing that we did was to remove the scaling system. Bloody stupid with all due respect. Why is this? Because the scaling system recognizes the differences in resources that we give to different schools.”

Professor Vanualailai says the scaling system took a lot of aspects into account.

“The most important thing of all is that it recognizes the difficulty of subjects. You cannot compare history with mathematics for example. This is stupid. By removing the scaling system, you completely remove that kind of recognition of a difficult subject and the resources given to a particular school.”

Tertiary Scholarships and Loans Service Chief Executive Hasmukh Lal explains how this has affected the awarding of scholarships.

“For example, under the merit-based scholarship, the cutoff mark for those who want to do best learning and culture for urban schools is 310 out of 400. And for the rural schools, the maritime schools are 300. We need to create these so that we can reduce the disparity and allow more access.”

These concerns were raised by panelists discussing Fiji’s Tertiary Education quality organized by Dialogue Fiji in Suva last night.

Fiji Higher Education Commissioner Chief Executive, Dr Rohit Kishore highlights removing the repeat system also contributed to the poor quality of graduates.

“Just imagine if a student struggles in class 4. So the level of knowledge in class 4,  that poor student struggled. You put him or her in class 5. What are you doing? It is our responsibility. Class 6, class 7, no return. That poor student just dies and goes away.”

Kishore emphasizes that education quality begins at kindergarten. He adds that FHEC collaborates with various sectors to align higher education curricula with their needs.