As the world shrinks due to globalisation, new and complex challenges are emerging rapidly; these challenges need newer and sometimes radical tools to help address them. Most people agree that education, especially at the tertiary level, plays a fundamental part in addressing complex present day challenges. For us to address a critical challenge like the shrinking labour market and the rapid production of graduates yearly, we have to explore ways of making our certificates count.
For those who have been opportune to sit on job interview panels, one recurring decimal is the gulf between certificates presented and applicants. How, for instance, do you reconcile a first class or second class upper degree certificate with an individual that can hardly express himself, either written or orally? Our tertiary education system – more than ever – has an onerous task of looking beyond the mere award of certificates to ensuring they beneficial to individuals and the larger society.
I find it strange that some undergraduates go through higher education for four, five and sometimes six years without having inkling about where the degree they are acquiring will lead them after school other than the porous hope that they will get some job and start a career somewhere.
This lacuna has led to the proliferation of workshops, seminars, refresher courses and conferences bent on bridging the gap created by the quest for certificates by graduates, a failure of our educational system in adequately preparing graduates for the future. Trust Nigerians for not missing out on opportunities. A new “industry” of motivational speakers and “life” coaches has developed with a very ripe market of “buyers” for these services in the half-baked, poorly trained and ill-exposed products of our educational system. This is, however, not to imply that some of these workshops and conferences are not necessary, some credible ones definitely are.
Without doubt, education is one of the major arbiters of socialisation but when it is reduced to mere ability to obtain a certificate by fair or foul means; it becomes a tool for underdevelopment and retrogradation, sometimes on scales hardly imagined.Our past leadership crises is a pointer to this.
For qualitative education to be achieved and sustained, critical value must be placed on it so that those who receive it can see beyond its “putting food on the table” and refocus on the imperative to apply the gains of education to the needs of society. In other words, education, especially at the university level, needs to be properly valued and repositioned.
A look at some of the curricula in our tertiary education system seem to suggest that we are gradually being left behind as some courses have not been reviewed to fall in line with the changed times. It is sad to know that some of our lecturers are still relying on researches conducted years ago; some of these no longer fit current challenges. For instance, of what use is churning out hundreds of thousands of graduates every year without requisite entrepreneurial skills? But today, as I have argued elsewhere, teaching and scholarship has been watered down with regular research gradually becoming a rarity.
Education is supposed to prepare young people for the challenges of facing the future and making the best of it. It is supposed to help students to discover themselves, nurture their innate abilities and give vent to their God-given talents. Education is not supposed to put food in the hands of a hungry lad. It is supposed to help him learn the skills of scouting, hunting and getting food to satisfy the hunger as well as create value out of his acquisitions which can be exchanged for a store of further value which eventually translate to wealth creation.
Education can therefore not be about passing examinations and getting promoted into the next grade. It cannot be about acquiring certificates or certifications that do not empower the holder to add value to society in real terms. I see it as a journey in self-discovery (which is why it never ends), a journey that leads a man to the place of his assignment, the duty post that enables him to contribute not only to the enrichment and betterment of society but also towards empowering him to attaining self-actualisation.
It will appear the one thing our educational system has not failed to do is to glamorise riches and make it the ultimate in any human pursuit. In spite of the hollowness of the type of scholarship that is delivered across the educational chain in Nigeria, young people are not left without the now common desire and vaulting ambition to get rich as quickly and ‘effortlessly’ as possible. Is becoming successful no longer a process?
A side effect of this is that ‘success literatures’ have taken over the book stands and libraries as a testament to the widespread subordination of hard work and diligence to riches at any cost. This in addition to the earlier stated point about the success-teaching entrepreneurs who have created a burgeoning industry out of the lacuna that has been created by formal education.
Where did we derail? From the beginning of the quest for certificates, our prospective undergraduate is engaged in a rat race of passing his Unified Tertiary Matriculation examination (UTME) exams to scaling the extra road block of Post-UTME screening exercises. While in this race, most of them may not have been properly mentored to know what they are up against.
The journey of higher education in Nigeria places unduly strong emphasis on students passing examinations and acquiring certificates. Serious attempt to link or lead the students and eventual graduates to discovering their calling and how the education being acquired will empower them to be masters of their destinies in the very near future are most times discounted.
It is very easy to find graduates who know next to nothing in their chosen field of study. Again, you may ask, “how did he get the certificate?” The answer is simple – by passing exams! So those who contend that Nigerian graduates are ill-prepared for the real world of work cannot be more right after all.
What’s my take on this? I believe the time to rethink our entire tertiary educational system is now. Education must be structured to unleash the potential in every learner, leading them to acquire the much needed skills to become a source of value addition to life and the nation.
Much of the ignorance that encircles contemporary Nigeria today certainly stems from the education industry. It is easy to point to government’s lacklustre attitude as the major problem of the educational sector. But that cannot be the whole truth. The education industry is also an adversary unto itself. Beyond turn-coat Ministers of Education, who even as academics helped to under-develop education, teachers and students have not lived up to expectation. In the lower levels (especially in the public schools), there are quack teachers who cannot read or write good English, and yet English remains the language of instruction.
Given the role of education in human societies, Nigeria’s future remains very bleak indeed. I say so because the educational system is merely a pastiche of the society. This is especially true of the universities which should be centres of excellence, but which have become a pitiable extension of the rotten political system in Nigeria. If the universities – indeed, the entire educational system – must be the vanguard of excellence and development, they have to operate at a level higher than the ugly realities that define contemporary Nigeria.
An important question to ponder is this: must every secondary school leaver go to the university? Why can we not resuscitate technical/vocational schools, equip them to award certificates in select vocations such as carpentry, auto mechanics, masonry, photography, craft, pottery, printing technology, etc.? If done properly, it would reduce the unnecessary strain on the varsity system while affording some youths the opportunity to gain practical proficiency in some chosen fields without acquiring degrees in the universities for which they are ill-equipped.
More than anything else, we need the return of a vibrant intelligentsia that can bring back the era of all round research that addresses societal needs. We should rebound from the long history of the humiliation of the collective psyche of the intelligentsia which dates far back to the military era. It is not too late for a reawakening.
