HIGHLIGHTS OF THE GRADUATE RESEARCH CLINIC ROUNDTABLE ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
By Moses E. Ochonu
Congratulations to the Graduate Research Clinic of the University of Ibadan for organizing such a rich conversation on the problems of Nigerian higher education and the solutions to them to mark their third year anniversary.
Professor Francis Egbokhare, a Professor of linguistics at UI and the current president of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, was the keynote speaker with yours sincerely and Professor Yakubu Ochefu, Executive Secretary of the Committee of Vice Chancellors, as discussants. The conversation was moderated by Professor Tunji Olaopa.
Professor Egbokhare's presentation was incisive, comprehensive, and refreshingly candid in its analysis of the problems.
I came away with a better appreciation of the systemic dimensions of the problems, but the human agencies remain and were effectively dealt with in the presentation and the subsequent discussion.
Here are some of my favorite takeaways from Professor Egbokhare's presentation:
1. Funding is no longer an issue of primary consequence in Nigeria's tertiary education sector. Increased funding, the result of ASUU activism, has not solved the fundamental problems and have not improved performance metrics. In fact, it has generated unintended internal governance problems of accountability, dysfunction, corruption, and waste.
2. The academic recruitment system is broken and that has led to many lecturers being recruited who are simply not qualified to teach in tertiary education. The result is poorly educated students/graduates. You cannot teach what you don't know or understand.
3. Ethno-religious and community capture of and pressure on public institutions of higher learning have significantly hamstrung them, undermining their leadership recruitment process and their capacity to nimbly and creatively respond to challenges.
4. There is serious introspection and recalibration going on within ASUU, the details of which are internal, but this is a necessary and welcome change as the union has finally accepted that its current methods are no longer entirely tenable or effective and have become part of the problem.
5. Unitary, one-size-fits-all regulatory control, analogous to the one exerted on subnational units by the unitary Nigerian state, holds institutions of higher learning back and prevents them from doing creative things in response to emerging challenges.
6. We need new systems thinking in university administration/management, and we need a new philosophical grounding for higher education.
7. The system is plagued by limited English proficiency
8. The public universities are producing so many First Class graduates because their graduates were losing out on all the best jobs to graduates of private universities--institutions that were producing First Class graduates by the boatload. The public institutions wanted to catch up as many employers were stipulating a minimum of 2:1 and expressing a preference for First Class graduates, hence grade inflation and other fraudulent methods set in. While there are students who are very brilliant and have leveraged resources on the web and other platforms to earn First Class degrees, the current glut of First Class is a scam.
9. Higher education institutions do not support lifelong learning outside the degree/diploma credentialing framework.
10. Accreditation of courses in tertiary institutions is a huge scam and everyone knows it.
11. Some university administrators and governing council members are failed third-rate politicians who merely see tertiary institutions as arenas of patronage.
For my part, I made the point that critical thinking is needed in the curriculum of Nigerian higher education, and that there is need for, a) a new compensation system for academics which rewards and incentivizes teaching and research excellence; b) greater accountability on the part of lecturers to discourage poor teaching and unethical conduct; c) writing studios in tertiary institutions to improve the quality of written English; d) a students bill of rights to protect students from abuses and give them guaranteed and codified rights in their relationships and interactions with lecturers and administration/management.
On the final point about a student bill of rights, I am glad that a new organization established by students and recent graduates is sponsoring a bill, in collaboration with a House of Rep member representing one of the southwestern constituencies, in the national assembly. They contacted me and I have been advising and working with them in that regard.
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