FNU Vice Chancellor Professor Nigel Healey says that many of their local staff are not qualified to the higher education levels such as PhD.
While talking to the Parliamentary Standing Committee On Social Affairs about their 2017 annual report, Healey says as a result they are reliant on hiring PhD qualified expatriates to support some of the higher education program.
He says a challenge for them is to increase the number of Fijian staff holding higher education qualities particularly PhD.
Healey says they now have some staff that are doing their PhD overseas.
Healey says they also have some staff that are doing their PhD in Fiji.
However, he highlighted to the committee that one of the issues with expatriates is the three year contract.
He says under the law, the jobs needs to be re‑advertised every three years to find out if there’s a local candidate who is better qualified.
Healey says this is entirely reasonable.
He adds that if people are on three year contracts they generally tend to start looking for other jobs when they are in their second year of the contract.
FNU currently has about 100 expatriates which is 10% of their workforce.
