The rate at which Universities are being established in Nigeria without a proportionate translation of knowledge to the students is alarming.
It is shocking to note that at a time when developed countries pay attention to university education through infrastructure development, funding and research, the federal government of Nigeria, through the ministry of education, is paying lip service to university education.
In the early 60s, 70s and 80s, the focus of university education was giving the best education to university students who were prepared to contribute to national development. However the case is different now as the focus in the last two decades has shifted to giving the ‘worst’ education to students as they are prepared for local markets which have much fewer jobs than the number of graduates being produced.
Public universities in this country used to rank alongside any standard university anywhere in the world. There was massive investment in them, coupled with the dedication and commitment of the academics working in the institutions.
BDSUNDAY’s finding shows that the peak of public investments in education was in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. It was not very difficult to see first generation campuses producing an array of academics and researchers from across the world, milling around and pursuing their varied interests in science, medicine, social science and humanities.
Back then standard was high enough to attract students from around the world, but the universities are now overcrowded; the best graduates seek employment in the private sector or abroad, leaving the ivory tower with average or mediocre scholars, while universities continue to spring up amid problems of underfunding, teaching staff and standards. According to the organised private sector, most Nigerian university graduates are not fit for employment.
Statistics show that from only six universities in 1970, the National Universities Commission (NUC) lists 170 today – 43 owned by the Federal Government, 48 by state governments while 79 are privately-owned – with a number of distance learning centres and affiliated colleges. These institutions, in total, have the capacity to absorb only 500,000 students yearly.
In the latest World’s universities ranking, no Nigerian university was listed within the top 1000 in the world. This is, no doubt, a true reflection of the quality of the Nigerian education system.
The certificates issued in Nigerian tertiary institutions paints another worrying picture as these certificates continue to face quality test due to a mirage of problems facing the entire educational sector in the country.
In today’s competitive world of employment, it is routine by employers to recruit candidates that parade not just a certificates that bears first class or second class upper division, but seek candidates with the right working skills that can contribute to the development of their companies.
Employers want their recruits to be competent technically in their chosen field. They also want them to come of school well equipped with complementary life skills such as problem solving, reflective and critical thinking, interpersonal and teaming skills, effective communication, organising skills and ability to translate ideas to action.
However with the growing unemployment rate in the country and employment companies finding it difficult to get the right candidates as a result of poor quality of graduates from our tertiary institutions, education experts and stakeholders have been wondering at the worth of Nigeria degree certificate today; who needs it and what those saddled with the responsibility of managing the educational system are doing to address this issue.
Often, employers of labour have complained about the lack of relevant skills by the so-called graduates from the country’s institution of higher learning while other institutions running post graduate programmes have introduced internal examinations to test the aptitude of the graduates before admission. This, experts say, points to the doubt that exist about the quality of the degree certificates obtained from the tertiary institutions.
The experts believe that the only way out is for tertiary institutions to work more closely with organisations. The debate arises from empirical evidences which reveal that many Nigerian graduates are not empowered with the requisite skills needed to perform effectively on the job.
Peter Okebukola, a professor at Lagos State University and a former executive secretary, National Universities Commission, while commenting on the issue, revealed that the worth of a university degree is the depth of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values associated with that degree which the graduate bears as a consequence of his/her training.
He disclosed that any degree earned through sloppy training cannot endow the holder with respectable knowledge and skills for the world of work or for postgraduate studies.
According to him, “the absorptive capacity of the labour market in Nigeria has shrunk significantly in the last 10 years, making it increasingly difficult for graduates to secure public and private sector employment. This, he said, has translated into about 30 per cent of graduates of Nigerian universities being unemployed or under-employed.
Isaac Adeyemi, a professor at Bells University, Otta, Ogun State noted that this standard problem started during the military era when the education sector faced a serious problem which has continued till date.
He listed some of the problems as poor funding, brain drain due to poor welfare package for lecturers, poor students/lecturers ratio where institutions admit more than their carrying capacity, as well as the corruption which bedevils the entire society.
“If you want to pursue a graduate course abroad after your first degree here, they make you go through an internal examination which is a kind of creating doubt on the quality of the certificate you have come with. Of course, the Nigerian university system has begun to copy that even when students are coming for graduate programmes; they send them through an aptitude test which is an indication of doubt about the quality of the certificate that people are carrying,” Peterside noted.
While noting that government has started doing something to address the problem by granting autonomy to universities, the don pointed out that the country was not yet compliant with international standard in terms of funding for education.
Chinedu Duru, a human resources manager, while reacting to the issue, pointed out that human capital development is bedevilled with the neglect of the present and past governments concerning their promises to the citizens in the area of investment in education, which has remained largely undelivered..
Duru noted that the universities should work more closely with the industries, try to understand their needs, have a forum where there could be an exchange of ideas as to the challenges the industries are facing and how they can develop a proper curriculum to address these challenges.
Apparently disenchanted with the poor quality of university graduates, Duru informed BDSunday that a country like the USA has strategically provided for the needs that would become very predominant in the next 50 years for professionals and have made strategic moves to fill the gap, wondering why Nigeria should not follow suit.
He says the problem of skill gap was increasingly becoming a multi-faceted one, noting that organisations were looking for certain skills to help their business improve.
Nigerian universities lack four major indicators of quality education, accounting for the present sorry state of the sector. First, while the world’s top universities operate with sizable budgets, Nigerian universities lack adequate and regular funding, not just to pay staff salaries but also to fund research and provide cutting-edge facilities and an environment conducive to teaching and learning. Save for a few private universities into which their proprietors pumped huge resources, often for take-off, Nigerian university campuses and research facilities leave much to be desired.
On his part, Ayanlaja Ogunde, an educationist stressed that the Nigerian degree was not worthless in terms of academic but worth very little in practice.
Ogunde whose institution is involved in filling the skill gap in Nigerian graduates to position them better for the actual work environment, was worried that the academic contents in the country’s institutions often do not address the real needs of the society.
“Academically, the Nigerian degree is not worthless because it is the basis of determination of students’ ability to think; it is also relevant for admission into institutions of higher learning abroad, but in practical relevance it is worth little. Often, academic contents are not relevant to the needs of the society, especially to the employers. Graduates from these institutions are usually theoretically baked but half-baked for the business/practical world,” the educationist stated.
He lamented that these graduates are not groomed for successful living because they passed through a system that encouraged dishonesty, corruption, mediocrity and other vices, while calling on other stakeholders, especially the policy drivers who are more in position, to address the problem.
In order to raise the competiveness and relevance of Nigerian graduates, Ogunde said it had become more pressing to managers of the education sector to engage in steady upgrade of its present curriculum to meet the needs of the ever-changing world of today.
KELECHI EWUZIE
