Thad series of discussions with a parent who has three children in different universities across the country recently. He lamented that he spends millions of naira annually in fees and upkeep of his children and was wondering what jobs they would get in present day Nigeria to compensate for the huge funds he will, in the end, expend on their education. One of our discussions veered into the area of course contents/relevance and the challenges of the 21st century where change is quite rapid.
“I discover that most of the content of courses offered in our universities today is not in tune with current realities, I even learnt that some lectures still use notes developed years ago to teach students in this age and time. I also painfully discovered that a good percentage of them have stopped researching for various reasons,” he told me.
He’s not the only one with these concerns. Without mincing words, our varsities need reform if we are to effectively key into the knowledge era. In their essay: “Learning for a World of Constant Change: Homo Sapiens, Home Faber & Homo Ludens revisited,” Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown argued that for much of the 20th century, learning had focused on the acquisition of skills or transmission of information “or what we define as ‘learning about.”’
They added that near the end of the 20th century learning theorists started to recognise the value of “learning to be,” of putting learning into a situated context that deals with systems and identity as well as the transmission of knowledge. “We want to suggest that now even that is not enough. Although learning about and learning to be worked well in a relatively stable world, in a world of constant flux, we need to embrace a theory of learning to become. Where most theories of learning see becoming as a transitional state toward becoming something, we want to suggest that the 21st century requires us to think of learning as a practice of becoming over and over again…to embrace change and focus on becoming as central and persistent elements of learning.”
Why should we be bothered about overhauling our varsities? The answer is simple. Knowledge has become the most important factor for economic development in the 21st century. Through its capacity to augment productivity, it increasingly constitutes the foundation of a country’s competitive advantage.
This change, as expected, is most evident in developed countries, where investments in the intangibles that makes up the knowledge base of a country (e.g., research and development, higher education, computer software, patents etc) equals, or even exceeds investments in physical equipment. Nigeria and other developing economies, while affected by these transformations, are not yet reaping their benefits because they’ve not effectively invested in it.
When the “Asian tigers” burst forth industrially in the 1990s, their ‘economic miracle’ was linked to substantial prior investment in human resources. These strategic investments were deliberate. Their university systems were overhauled; extant intellectual property protection laws were reviewed. As expected, this led to the historical evolution of industrial Research and Development (R&D) and the mutually beneficial partnership between private industries, universities and government in R&D.
Research suggests that public policy plays an important role in shaping national innovative capacity by determining human capital investments and creating incentives for innovation. Countries that have increased their innovative capacities have invested heavily in science and engineering education in addition to arts and humanities. This often leads to the promotion of competition as the basis for innovation.
Does Nigeria possess the necessary elements to develop a national innovation system? We have, but the facts are not encouraging. Where data is available, it indicates low levels of investment in research capacity and education. This explains why our non-oil economy has remained consistently sluggish over the years.
On the research side, Nigeria’s number of scientific publications is negligible. For instance, from 1,062 scientific publications in 1981, it fell to a mere 711 in 1995. In contrast, scientific publications were 3,413 for South Africa, 14,883 for India, and 5,440 for Brazil. Nigeria’s low research output reflects the low priority accorded R&D by government decision-makers. This is not only applicable in the sciences alone, it cuts across all disciplines.
As we are on the threshold of a new dispensation, innovative thinking and new strategies are seriously needed to serve as essential guides to future educational provision and practice. Such strategies should include improvement of evaluation and accreditation systems, review of programs to make them more responsive to societal needs, informed management of higher education, promotion of university linkages with the private sector, and involvement in policy analysis through research.
In addition, improvement of higher education will require more effective utilisation of new information and communication technologies. Our varsities will need to review their missions and come up with specific strategic plans based on each university’s unique situation, as well as national and global issues affecting universities.
A number of programs already address the issue of 21st century skills. For example, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a U.S. advocacy organisation formed in 2002, developed a vision of the broader set of skills required for success in the 21st century. These include core skills covered by the existing curriculum in most countries – language, mathematics, science, and arts – combined with 21st century themes such as environmental awareness and the impacts of globalization. These are complemented by learning and innovation skills, information media and technology skills, and life and career skills.
Additionally, effective economic and social operation in the 21st century demands adaptability, cultural awareness and advanced critical thinking and information literacy skills, demanding continuing learning opportunities in vital areas of the arts and humanities. The constant herdsmen/farmers clash in some parts of the country readily comes to mind which further points to the fact that we need new sets of skills. Our varsities can play a key role in this regard.
While we are sleeping, many 21st century skills are already supported by curricula around the world. For example, the U.K. science curriculum is designed to enable students to develop a number of skills such as teamwork and creative problem solving. Efforts are also made to translate theory into practice.
The transformation of skills and technology use cannot take place without a new approach to system reform. There has been a revolutionary change in nearly every dimension of society, with the exception of our lecture halls where we continue to reinforce traditional approaches to teaching. Changing this will require leaders to develop a compelling vision of 21st century learning, communicate it with passion, and ensure that it is translated into action at all levels of the system.
The factors responsible for the poor quality of university programs (and graduates) appear to be both internal and external to the universities. Internal factors include strikes, lack of employee motivation, and weak accountability for educational performance. External factors comprise lecturer shortages, corruption, inconsistent funding efforts by government, and admissions based on quotas rather than merit.
It is about time we take a look again at the Higher Education Policy Reforms which was formulated years ago to infuse quality into the university system in order to bring back its old glory in line with international standards. As things stand now there is a mismatch between teaching in our tertiary institutions and the needs of the labour markets. In essence, graduates from our institutions have acquired skills which are not demanded by the labour market. This, no doubt, is the major reason for the soaring unemployment rate in the country.
Knowledge, as a 21st century currency, is necessary but not sufficient for today’s success because Students need skills to be able to apply their knowledge. This is today’s critical challenge.
