What a sad commentary on the state of higher education in Nigeria! The worst part of it all is that the picture is so true! Forget about comparing the student/staff ratio of Nigerian universities to that of Cambridge, which is like comparing apples and "yangi," the fact of the matter is that the University of Nigeria, Usukka was the very first indigenous university in Nigeria, given that the University of Ibadan was still a part of the University College of London as of the time the former was founded in 1961. One expects it to fare better. It is incredible to hear that it was just producing its first PhD degree recipient after two generations of history - wow!
You raised a serious issue here, Professor Olukotun, and that is that our government does not have a viable vision for quality higher education. Just as has been the case with its abject neglect of other social institutions, except, I must add, the religious institution, our government has not seriously invested on, or has indeed totally abandoned, this sector of our economy. In addition, archaic practices of our institutions continue to make our graduate education one heck of a laughing stock to the academics around the world. Take for example, there is this pervasive culture of bringing the so called "external examiners" from overseas to come and authenticate the PhD dissertation of a student s/he has never met or taught, in a program s/he has no knowledge of its history or makeup, to a nation s/he probably had never been to, and of course a culture of which s/he is completely ignorant. This is such a blatant professional malpractice, an expression of inferiority complex and a travesty of professionalism on the part of senior academic staff in our universities. I try to imagine if someone would suggest the use of an "external examiner" for a PhD defense here in the United States, that person would be laughed to scorn for such a stone-age mentality! I have not even spoken of the quality of supervision, the relationship of subserviency between the graduate students and their supervisors, and a laundry list of other misnormals. I can only hope that someone will pinch our government and wake it up to the reality of the declining and depressing state of higher education in Nigeria and force it to do something! Quality higher education is a reality in capacity building and it is only when it is well funded and well regulated that it can move a nation to a new dispensation in its effort to bring about any form of developments.
From: "ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com" <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 11:33 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: DISTRESSING NEWS FROM THE IVORY TOWER
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You raised a serious issue here, Professor Olukotun, and that is that our government does not have a viable vision for quality higher education. Just as has been the case with its abject neglect of other social institutions, except, I must add, the religious institution, our government has not seriously invested on, or has indeed totally abandoned, this sector of our economy. In addition, archaic practices of our institutions continue to make our graduate education one heck of a laughing stock to the academics around the world. Take for example, there is this pervasive culture of bringing the so called "external examiners" from overseas to come and authenticate the PhD dissertation of a student s/he has never met or taught, in a program s/he has no knowledge of its history or makeup, to a nation s/he probably had never been to, and of course a culture of which s/he is completely ignorant. This is such a blatant professional malpractice, an expression of inferiority complex and a travesty of professionalism on the part of senior academic staff in our universities. I try to imagine if someone would suggest the use of an "external examiner" for a PhD defense here in the United States, that person would be laughed to scorn for such a stone-age mentality! I have not even spoken of the quality of supervision, the relationship of subserviency between the graduate students and their supervisors, and a laundry list of other misnormals. I can only hope that someone will pinch our government and wake it up to the reality of the declining and depressing state of higher education in Nigeria and force it to do something! Quality higher education is a reality in capacity building and it is only when it is well funded and well regulated that it can move a nation to a new dispensation in its effort to bring about any form of developments.
Michael O. Afolayan
From: "ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com" <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 11:33 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: DISTRESSING NEWS FROM THE IVORY TOWER
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2013 16:15:39 +0000 (GMT)
To: <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
Subject: DISTRESSING NEWS FROM THE IVORY TOWER
DISTRESSING NEWS FROM THE IVORY TOWER Ayo Olukotun On Christmas day last year, a little noticed and yet to be discussed bit of information concerning one of our oldest universities was published in The Punch. Michael Ukonu, a lecturer in the department of mass communication of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka had reportedly broken a 51 year jinx being the first person to receive a doctorate degree in mass communication from a department that started in 1961. Upon reading the report, my mind quickly went back to the so many illustrious journalists that had passed through that department and I kept querying why it took half a century to produce a Ph.D. To understand the seriousness of the situation, let us recall that the Federal government Committee on Needs Assessment of Nigerian public universities released late last year informs that our universities are "grossly understaffed, relying heavily on part-time and under qualified academics." Specifically, the committee found out that only 43% of academics teaching in our public universities have doctorate degrees while only 7 universities had up to 60% of its academic staff who have doctorates. Underlying the dire skills-gap in our multiplying ivory towers the committee noted with profound regret that a particular university which is 11 years old has only one professor on its staff list. Given this backdrop, one is led to expect that a policy to fast track the accelerated turning out of doctorate degree holders in several disciplines would be in place particularly noting that Government has continued to set up more universities. In other words if the capacity gaps in tertiary education were already severe would it not have made more sense to institute measures to close the gaps rather than worsen an already distressing situation? From another perspective, it ought to be noted that several countries around the world are paying more and more attention to graduate education in the context of building a knowledge society, maintaining a competitive edge as well as reinserting themselves on the intellectual world map through the quality and global ranking of their doctoral programmes. Recall for example, such initiatives as the Bologna Declaration and the Lisbon Strategy which sought to revitalise and to reconceptualise European higher education in order to jumpstart a "Europe of knowledge" in the context of global competitiveness. Obviously, countries that wish to get ahead in a globalising world must view graduate education as a strategic resource which speaks to their capacities to innovate as well as enhance problem solving aptitudes with respect to several threatening contemporary challenges. We must then raise the question: why did it take so long for Nsukka to produce a doctorate degree holder in mass communication? We do this not to put the university on the spot for presumably most other universities are not doing significantly better but to pinpoint a crucial dimension of the national failure to harness or better still mainstream human resources. Several reasons can be suggested one of them being the lack of incentives at national and institutional levels for students who wish to pursue graduate studies leading up to Ph.D to do so. In a society, where close to 80% of citizens live below the poverty line many bright students cannot afford to pay the cost of doctoral education especially given the high rate of unemployment which means that they do not have jobs with which to support themselves. This of course is not a problem peculiar to Nigeria; it is just that other societies in recognition of the importance of doctoral education have devised mechanisms to ameliorate the financial insecurity of those who wish to undertake doctoral studies. Abiodun Salawu, Professor of Mass Communication at University of Forte Hare, South Africa who has just been named the Mazisi Kunene Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban in a discussion with this writer informs that all Masters and Ph.D candidates in Forte Hare and in most other universities are entitled to tuition fee waivers for the duration of their programmes. This is quite apart from supervisor-linked bursaries as well as offers for doctoral students to serve as part-time lecturers or tutors in their departments. This of course is broadly similar to what obtains in several countries around the globe where it is unlikely that any national of those countries would be denied the opportunity of pursuing doctoral education for lack of financial support. As a country we are fond of paying lip-service to programmes which we have no intention of implementing or which come to grief because we fail to back them up with financial wherewithal. If we are serious about closing the enormous skills-gaps in our universities then we must open up a fast lane for producing the high level manpower that will staff these multiplying institutions without of course allowing the quality of training to drop. It is also conceivable that Nsukka like many other universities do not have senior academics in critical mass for the supervision of doctoral students. As a result of successive policy misadventures as well as a national culture of philistinism the universities are badly depleted especially at the level of senior academics while those who remain and labouring in heroic circumstances are overworked and already carry more than their fair share of workload. This suggestion is made in the context of the needs assessment report alluded to earlier which informs that at the University of Abuja to take a random example the staff to student ratio is one academic to 363 students. Contrast this almost horrifying statistic to what obtains at the University of Cambridge where the staff student ratio is 1:3. In other words, the failure of previous and current governments to pay requisite attention to the human resource profiles of our universities reproduces such anomalies as their incapacity to train apprentice academics. There is the problem too that many talented students who begin doctoral programmes either do not finish them or spend an eternity trying to get their degree. Again this is not a problem peculiar to Nigeria although obviously its Nigerian dimension given truncated academic calendar and the anomy in our public culture is extreme. Consequently, many students are frustrated out of doctoral programmes for a host of reasons which have nothing to do with the abilities or industry of the students themselves. In such circumstances, once a department acquires notoriety for high drop-out rate or for interminably long years of pursuing higher degrees people tend to avoid it like plague. It will be interesting to find out what the national record is with respect to the successful completion of doctoral programmes in our universities. But my feeling is that such data is bound to shock us as well as sound a wakeup call to a nation that has tragically ignored or undervalued its human assets. It is one thing for Nigerians who can afford it to study abroad, it is quite another to build national institutions which specifically cater to our peculiar needs. The time to begin to reverse the decay in higher education is now. Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236 |
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