University of the South Pacific Suva

While not necessarily a must-see from a tourist’s perspective, this is the foremost provider of tertiary education to the island nations of the Pacific region. The USP’s main Laucala Campus offers some fascinating people-watching and picturesque strolling through a small botanical garden where you can see temporary exhibits of paintings and carvings at the Oceania Centre for Arts & Culture. The USP Bookshop nearby is particularly well-stocked. The governments of 12 Pacific countries jointly own the university and mingling among the Fijian students you’re likely to see young academics from the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu and Western Samoa. As this is a fee-paying institution, many of the 11,000 or so students rely on scholarships, and the competition for them is fierce.