Is NUC Really Controlling Quality in Varsities?

By Luke Onyekakeyah At a time when Nigerian governors, special advisers, political appointees and indeed, anyone who could afford it are streaming to Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and other Ivy League educational institutions abroad to acquire one diploma or certificate to add to their cap, the National Universities Commission (NUC) is forcing vice chancellors of Nigerian universities to close down all diploma and certificate programmes they run in the name of quality control. This is outrageous, to say the least.

Are Nigerian varsities not supposed to aspire to the league of the best in the world? Why would foreign universities be offering diploma and certificate courses that attract Nigerians while our own universities are barred from doing the same? Why can’t foreigners come to the University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Ahmadu Bello University, to receive world class diplomas and certificates? What sort of universities are we running in this hi-tech information age? And what sort of quality control is the NUC implementing? Going by the many clearly illogical and out of tune decisions the NUC is imposing on the universities in recent times, the commission is overreaching its powers and by so doing putting confusion in the universities. It is senseless to compel the universities to dismantle approved academic programmes for which students have fully enrolled. Where was the NUC when the programmes were mounted in the first place? The NUC had, the other day, claimed, after a meeting with vice-chancellors in Abuja that they “have taken far-reaching decisions on the university system to make it one of the world best.” At the centre of the decisions was the scrapping of sub-degree diplomas being run in the universities. And the NUC says scrapping the diplomas would make Nigerian universities one of the best in the world. Haba! How can that be? According to the Executive Secretary of the NUC, Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, running sub-degree diplomas was not originally the business of universities but that of the polytechnics. He said the Federal Government, as far back as November, 2001, issued a circular that such diplomas could not be used for employment or promotion purposes in the public service. This is where the problem lies. We are running a bread and butter education philosophy that is geared towards getting employment and promotion on the job instead of focusing on producing well-rounded intellectuals that can handle national development challenges. Who told the NUC and the Federal Government that the diplomas and certificates courses run by Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, among others, are meant for job employment and promotion? The diplomas offered by the Ivy League institutions are tailor-made to produce experts and world-class professionals in specific disciplines. Majority of people who obtained those diplomas did not have the prospect of job promotion at the back of their mind. For example, how many ex-governors and other political appointees who went to Harvard to obtain diplomas did so to get employment of promotion? Virtually, not even one did. Rather, all went to sharpen their intellect and professional expertise to make them gurus in their chosen fields. Furthermore, the NUC said the “universities should direct their energies towards their primary function of producing high-level manpower for the economy.” Good, but with big question mark. Is the NUC not aware that the diplomas run by universities are equally designed to produce high-level manpower? Postgraduate diplomas are designed to enhance the skill and competence of the candidate after he or she had graduated. Without such diplomas, the individual might be ill-equipped to practise in a particular profession. To place the running of diplomas in the court of the polytechnics is not only absurd but unprecedented anywhere in the world. The polytechnics we have are not equipped to run such high-level diplomas the NUC is throwing at them. Most of the polytechnics are gloried institutions. They don’t have competent lecturers besides not having standard laboratories and necessary infrastructure. Moreover, it is degrading, at least, in Nigeria, for someone to graduate from a university and then go to a polytechnic for a diploma. The polytechnics here are not like the ones in the developed world. Rasheed said the parameters and variables for ranking are outside the control of universities and NUC. This is absolutely untrue. Ranking of universities is done online based on information on university’s website. How many Nigerian universities have details of their lecturers’ publications on line? The NUC is clearly misdiagnosing the problems in the universities. The commission is leaving the crux of the matter and beating about the bush. The fundamental problem facing all educational institutions in Nigeria is gross underfunding. The universities are not left out. A lot has been said about the gross underfunding of our universities to no avail. Rather than improve the funding keeps reducing. The UNESCO reportedly prescribed that 26 per cent of the national budget should be spent on education. But it is common knowledge that over the years, Nigeria’s spending hardly exceeds 10 per cent. The percentage spending on education in 2016 is mere eight per cent. At the same time, Ethiopia is 20.1, Kenya 15.7 and South Africa 13 per cent. How on earth would the universities be able to meet the academic programmes they have mapped out to do? The situation is worse in the polytechnics. And so, shifting the responsibility to the polytechnics is insensitive and a disservice to the nation. It is incomprehensible why the NUC looks the other way when the universities are reeling in decrepit infrastructure due to underfunding. Not only that, payment of the lecturers’ entitlements is a herculean task. The result is incessant strikes and disruption of academic calendar. What effort has the NUC made to ensure that the universities receive adequate funding? The universities are stretching their available manpower because they are unable to hire more hands and sponsor staff for PhDs. In a typical university, a lecturer may teach as many as a thousand students in congested lecture halls. Universities are citadels of learning. The job of the NUC is not to cut all the universities with the same yardstick. There should be differences between the first generation universities and the new ones. It is senseless to expect all the universities to be equal. The NUC’s quality assurance does not monitor the duplication of courses all over. No university is reputed for specializing in courses that address local problems. The NUC has done nothing in that regard. That should be part of quality control. Let the universities aspire high and not be limited by unnecessary quality control not known anywhere in the world. Dr. Luke Onyekakeyah is prolific writer and researesearcher. He sent this piece from Lagos, Nigeria.