The universities are producing products that are not matching the needs of the industries. I urged the Committee of Pro-chancellors and Committee of Vice-Chancellor to end the decline in the standard of education,” he said.… Law students attend Law School for one year before going for NYSC and medical students go for one-year Housemanship before they are allowed to practice fully, so it will be necessary for other courses to also go through this process…. The Lagos Business School can also serve as a one year after-school training…. Anthony Anwukah, Minister of State for Education.
The Minister of State for Education, Anthony Anwukah said recently that graduates from the country’s universities are unemployable because their knowledge does not meet the needs of industries. He said this at a retreat preparatory to National Universities Commissions’ plan to reform university education. The Minister added that his ministry is mulling over increasing the current four-year programme of study for undergraduate degrees in all disciplines to five years. One good thing about this announcement is that it has come in advance of efforts by NUC to reform university education, thus giving experienced higher education specialists and citizens in general adequate notice to intervene in pre-reform debate that is required for such a major policy initiative.
The acknowledgment by the Education Minister is not new. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala made similar remarks about six years ago, when she characterized university graduates as generally unemployable, without concluding in her own case that the problem would be solved by adding one year to the time to complete an undergraduate degree. Since the Education Minister too has not reached a conclusion on the matter, it is proper to warn policymakers at the Ministry of Education and their counterparts at the NUC that “mulling over adding one more year to residency requirement for an undergraduate degree” may not be a rational way to solve a problem whose cause does not seem to have been identified.
Taking such a decision may be tantamount to facing the effects of a behavior without worrying about the cause(s) of such effects. How much longitudinal and latitudinal research has been conducted on the issue of quality of undergraduate education in the country? What are specific statistical and anecdotal evidence to support why Ghanaians, Sierra Leonians in West Africa and Ugandans and Kenyans in East Africa, as well as South Africans and Botswanans are able to produce undergraduate degree holders who can meet the needs of industries at the end of four years of residency? The research needed to answer this question needs to be done before any rational policymaker can reach a decision on how many years would Nigerian undergraduates need to benefit from university education, if we have good reasons to assume that Nigerians are different from other nationals in this respect.
More specifically, both NUC and the Ministry of Education ought to find out why students who attended Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello, Ife, Nsukka, Lagos, and other universities about twenty-five years ago acquired an education that matched the demands of industries after studying for three or four years. It is on record that most, if not all, of Nigeria’s stellar achievers attended some of the universities that the current generation of students unable to meet needs of industries attended.
Further, policy wonks assigned the task of reforming the university system need to take a holistic and rational approach to finding solution to the problem of decline in quality of university training in the country. Policymakers can benefit from a popular admonition of late Professor Sam Aluko. Put less poetically than he did, the advice goes thus: ‘Anyone who sets out from the campus of University of Ife with the intention of going to Ibadan should not turn left at the main gate towards Ondo. After such turn, the faster such person moves, the longer it will take the traveler to reach his destination.’ All stakeholders: the professoriate, undergraduates, parents/guardians should resist any attempt by government—also a major stakeholder—to impose a solution that cannot solve the problem at hand but that may be more likely to create new problems.
Nigeria is now a democracy rather than a military dictatorship. Many reforms had been made under military rule: federal government takeover of regional universities in the 1970s; introduction of 6-3-3-4 education system; establishment of National Universities Commission that came to have power over universities not owned by the central government; creation of JAMB as a federal agency with powers to regulate admission to federal, state and private universities; and establishment of NECO to do the same job with WAEC. Changing length of study for first academic degree should not be handled in a hurry and without proper debate by the Senate/Congregation of federal universities.
The issues involved in adding one year to academic to the number of years of study for first degrees are too complex to be handled without due reference to staff and students of federal universities, and non-federal universities need not be bound by any decision to increase the number of years for B.A. or B.SC. In all countries of the world, universities are not isolated from other levels of learning that provide students for them; primary and secondary education. There is no reason to single out the university system as the only source of decline in quality of learning. Serious research is important on decline in quality of education at all levels.
Some economistic minds are already saying that an additional year in the university would delay entry into the job market by one year. But the disadvantages of an additional year are many. It will cost the federal government more money to run an already underfunded university system. Nigerian parents will need to pay for one extra year that their counterparts in other parts of the world don’t need to do. Making Nigerian undergraduates spend five years for a programme that requires four years elsewhere will give the impression that the brain power of Nigerians is less than that of their counterparts in other countries, thus marking Nigerians as slow learners. Such policy may make it harder for Nigerian graduates to get admission to international universities and even to get jobs because of the stigma of being slow learners who need five years to do the same amount of work that other nationals do in four years.
But one good outcome from the recent special retreat preparatory to reforming education is that this important sector seems to be finally receiving needed attention. But the reform required seems to be much more complex than just adding one year to the length of study for undergraduate studies. It should include a reform that reduces central control over education in a federal system; that includes a policy to ensure full access to public education that provides adequate resources for improvement of quality of teaching and proper facilities for modern teaching and learning; consistent regulatory framework for private schools; and a comprehensive review of university curriculum (and of other levels of education) in relation to the demands of the 21st century.
Reforming the university system without or before the other levels of education—primary and secondary—is not advisable and not a matter that should be attempted this close to national elections. Preparation of the nation’s children for the future is too important to be discussed dispassionately in the extremely partisan atmosphere of electioneering. Education reform in a country that used to get its graduates (after three or four yeas of residency) admitted to the world’s leading universities on the strength of their transcripts but now produces students with difficulties getting jobs in companies certainly deserves a robust debate and planning. But there is too much political distraction that can water down or confuse such debate a few months before national elections. The remaining part of the first tenure of President Buhari should be devoted to the research needed to provide insight on a problem that requires the full attention of all citizens.
- Roposek@msn.com
