A renowned Pacific academic says countries in the region need to rethink their tertiary education strategies.
Brij Lal Photo: Supplied
Brij Lal, emeritus professor of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University, made the comments in light of the University of the South Pacific's celebration of its Golden Jubilee year.
Professor Lal started his academic journey with the USP in 1971 three years after it was created.
He said academia today is more globalised and the region needs to talk about improving the quality of tertiary education for future generations of Pacific Islanders.
"I mean you have a number of universities now in the islands. You have the National University of Samoa, you have the Solomon Islands University, there are three universities in Fiji so I think there has to be co-ordination between all these universities so that talk about how they can work co-operatively without duplicating the functions of each other."