The country’s premier tertiary Institute, the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) will be introducing four new Streams into all of its courses or programs as well as four other new courses under the recently launched Centre of excellence in ICT, in 2027.

This was announced by the UPNG Vice Chancellor, Professor Ian Findlay on Wednesday during the PNG Resource Week 2026 session on “Building Skilled Workforce and Increasing PNG’s participation in procurement and supply chain.”

The introduction of the four new streams in 2027 is seen as a major change and a long-term approach the university is taking, especially when the university had already launched its Centre of Excellence in ICT (Information & Communication Technology) that will deliver certificate-based qualifications focused on IT.

According to Professor Findlay, the four new streams are Technology, Artificial Intelligence (Ai), Critical Thinking Research, and Soft Skills.

“Those four streams will be embedded across every single course, in every single program. Because we need to make sure that all our graduates have basic skills in IT, basic skills in Ai, basic skills in critical thinking research,” said Prof. Findlay.

He stressed that in today's modern world everyone is surrounded by many fake news and misinformation, but how is this matter evaluated? It is through such skills that help one to narrow down those problems, get to the truth, and come up with resolutions.

“So, we have to make sure that all our graduates have those basic skills to succeed. And at the moment, they simply don’t. We want all our students and graduates to be successful. Because, the best students make the best graduates, and the best graduates make the best employees. And the best employees make the best companies. And it all starts at the beginning with the best education provided. So, we have a range of approaches to upskill the entire population of Papua New Guinea,” said the Professor.

UPNG is also looking to create a wide range of online programs for its 18 university centers to deliver to the Provinces. With an estimated fifteen percent of students in the cities, there is no point in delivering these programs. The other eighty-five percent that are not engaged should be receiving these programs as well.

He also highlighted that nearly ninety percent of the population do not have access to modern education and the UPNG is addressing that through its Universal Learning Centers by delivering online education such as, online degrees and online skills programs. He said that these are all basic leadership skills that can upscale all levels of PNG.

Professor Findlay further added that there is a huge lack of technology skills in PNG. And as part of the university’s obligation to uplift and upskill their graduates, the full Information Technology (IT) program will be open for new intakes in 2027. The four courses are Artificial Intelligence, Networking, Programming, and Cyber security.

“We have to uplift the capability, the capacity, the knowledge and the wisdom of IT, technology and Ai across the board. So, we make sure that we have PNG content and PNG solutions for PNG problems,” said Professor Findlay.