UK Edition
Professor who took on cheats is forced to flee Papua New Guinea university
When Professor John Warren left Wales to take up his new academic role two years ago in Papua New Guinea he believed he had found the job of his dreams.
The exotic country, nestling in the southwestern Pacific Ocean just north of Australia, seemed the idyllic location for the plant biologist and his wife, Cathryn, to settle.
But, as the new vice-Chancellor of country’s University of Natural Resources and Environment he discovered the perils of trying to rid the institution of cheating.
And it culminated in him being threatened with jail by a colleague and being told to “get out of there” before flee under cover of the night to fly to Australia.
Prof Warren resigned from his post at Aberystwyth University two years ago to fly to his new post halfway on the other side of the globe.
His attempts to crack down on cheating, improve academic standards and appoint staff based on merit rather than tribal allegiances ruffled the feathers of university staff who took umbrage at his reforms.
“Most staff didn’t understand that to pass a degree you have to get 50 per cent overall,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
“They couldn’t calculate percentages and there were a huge number of errors. There was no standard marking criteria.”
Prof Warren, 56 and originally from south Yorkshire, said he established simple procedures, like using spreadsheets to calculate marks. But there were “bells ringing almost instantly” with fellow university staff telling him to “just concentrate on getting money in and we’ll run the university”.
Prof Warren told how “none of the university council really had any genuine interest in students and academic standards. It was all about political power and manoeuvring.”
The fall out came to ahead at a university council meeting last month which he said made his position "untenable". He was also visited by a high ranking university colleague who appeared to threaten him.
“He said: ‘I’ve only come because I heard rumours that you are telling people I want to be vice-Chancellor.’
“I told him: ‘It’s not true’. He made it very clear that for something as trivial as that he could find people who could stand up in court and back him up.
“What he was doing was saying that ‘I can take you to court and put you in prison any time I like’.”
Prof Warren said this was “not an insignificant threat” because the Papua New Guinea laws are particularly tough on libel.
“Once you have a court order served on you, you can’t leave the country because immigration will stop you,” he said. “Court cases go on for years, however ludicrous.”
He said he asked the British High Commission for advice and was simply told to “just get out of there”.
Prof Warren resigned before his wife – a former head of science at a Welsh secondary school – smuggled him off the university campus after nightfall.
He then spent 48 hours hiding in a friend's house before flying to Australia and eventually home to Wales. His experience echoed that of Albert Schram, the Dutch vice-Chancellor of Papua New Guinea’s University of Technology, whose attempts to root out fraud in the institution led to claims from his colleagues that he faked his doctorate.
He fled the island in May after being released on bail. Prof Warren said he does not regret his decision to take up the vice-Chancellor post in, but has decided to retire from academia and hopes to run a sheep and pig farm in Wales.
“We didn’t go in completely ignorant, you always know it’s a risk and you need money to get out of there,” he said. “We had passports in suitcases under the bed.
“I don’t regret the adventure, the local people there are generous and it is an amazingly beautiful part of the world. With hindsight I might have been more suspicious of what was happening on campus.”
The University of Natural Resources and Environment could not be reached for comment.