Bolaji,
--
-- When I saw the first sentence of your post I thought you were going to skewer my contentions and positions but when I read your positions, much of it buttressed my position. In fact, taken together, the points you raise make a more compelling case for my position that I could have made. I will quote you copiously in this post, with your words in italics.
Always comparing the USA with Nigeria with respect to our university system is not entirely helpful.
1. First, Nigeria has a central regulatory body - the National Universities Commission NUC - the USA does not. Unfortunately, NUC does go quite beyond standards and accreditation - but that is the subject of another symposium.
Thanks. As stated in my response to Obi, I am not advocating the adoption of a US system, to the extent that there is a US system. I am saying let us look at what other countries are doing to encourage and reward productivity in research and teaching, study what works what doesn't work, consider our own unique realities and circumstances, and with these insights craft our own homegrown or hybrid system that take into account variables unique to our university system. You're doing exactly that in FUO, and as you yourself said, the document being discussed by your faculty draws partly on your experience at Howard. Nothing wrong with that. Other aspects of the document respond, I suspect, to factors unique to Nigeria and FUO. That's the way it should be. Institutions should have the flexibility to craft their own system of accountability, one that works in the context of NUC regulations. Although your institution is a non-ASUU institution, the FUO document could, if adopted, become a model for others, should ASUU allow it. My contention is that ASUU should not stand in the way of this decentralized, localized approach for solving what most fair-minded people, including ASUU members, recognize to be a unintended problem created paradoxically by the successes of ASUU: a sheltered, protected, and well remunerated academics who are not rewarded individually for teaching and research accomplishments and excellence and are instead discouraged from striving for research and teaching excellence as doing so holds no special reward or recognition for them. ASUU should allow these conversations about innovative, consultative, and creative solutions, such as the one emerging in FUO, to take place. Even better, it should be part of these solutions and give the green light for institutions and local branches to work out their own accountability templates.
I don't think the late Festus Iyayi or any of the ASUU pioneers could have foreseen this unintended consequence, nor could we, ASUU sympathizers and critics, have seen this scenario emerging as we cheered ASUU's past struggles and victories. Now, however, these problems are clear, and prominent academics and public intellectuals like Olukotun have shed light on them. Given that this problem is now public knowledge, I won't stand what some interlocutors are in effect suggesting: that we celebrate the accomplishment of ASUU but refuse to acknowledge the problems that those accomplishments have created, let alone address them. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can say well done to ASUU but also call attention to the problems spawned by past successful ASUU struggles and brainstorm on how to solve these problems.
Salaries in Nigeria of ALL university staff are set and published by the National Salaries and Wages Commission [see http://nsiwc.gov.ng/] on the CONTISS, CONUASS, CONMESS and CONHESS scales. Two professors at the same CONUASS 7 level, whether of Engineering or of Yoruba or Arabic Studies, earn the same salary. Even within a university in the US, the STARTING salary ranges are very fluid, and RARELY do you know or care about your colleagues' salary. And when you know, it either spurs you to greater productivity - ehn, you can earn this much? - or batten you down with despondency - "how can someone earn this much more than myself? Life is not fair..."
This is precisely the problem, and I couldn't have articulated it better. While the US system does have its excesses in which pay disparities within the same rank can sometimes be illogical and violate meritocracy, with luck, gender, race, and other factors sometimes playing subordinate roles, is the Nigerian system of everyone, regardless of field and productivity, earning the same thing not worse? As you yourself said, the individuated disparities in the US can "spur you to greater productivity." This positive effect is absent from the uniform, national, inflexible compensation system in Nigeria. In discussing an alternative, why, for instance, could we not bring ASUU and other stakeholders together to change the statutes establishing the uniform compensation systems to make them flexible enough to accommodate, within the broad range or within a recommended broad ceiling or bottom, individual raises and rewards that take into account teaching and research accomplishments and excellence? Life is not fair, but the argument is not just about fairness but also about solving the problem of poor or nonexistent research and teaching in our universities. For me that's a higher imperative than fairness, although there is something riveting about professors on the same rank irrespective of field and productivity, earning a nationally set pay.
It is not only ASUU (both an academic and a trade union) that "harasses" government and university management in Nigeria, but NASU, and SSANU, and NAATS (who make no pretenses to be academic associations) , each looking at each other's temporary collective bargaining gains, and upping their demands in response to such gains. This is not the case in the US, as AAUP's power is locale-dependent.
This is another important variable, in addition to the existence of a national regulator like the NUC, which would be part of the conversation on accountability. I imagine that once you change the CONTISS statute to make merit compensation possible, you have to also change that of CONUASS and others to achieve some sort of balance and to avoid rebellion from non-academic staff.
All Senates in Nigeria are in essence ACADEMIC UNIVERSITY SENATES, with the Vice-Chancellor its Chairman, and membership via rank and positions (eg all professors, directors, etc.) . In the US, there are indeed some of such Senates, but there are also mostly FACULTY SENATES, elected persons from the various faculties and units of the University. Being the highest deliberative body, whether you have an Academic Senate or a Faculty Senate matters.
Can the Senates not work with governing councils and local ASUU to craft acceptable models of accountability and merit compensation? Ok, so maybe they'll violate the centrally determined templates. I realize that the national wage structures and their statutes have to change to make such creative local solutions possible, but why won't ASUU allow their members to be held accountable in the interest of students/parents and Nigeria as a country--- the direct victims of the problem poor culture of research and teaching?
Except for the move from Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor, or from Associate Professor to Professor, the promotion system in Nigeria appears to be more time-bound (ie length of time spent in a given rank) more than productivity in a given rank. The salary increase system is also based on time on level, independent of differences in productivity. The problem is that what you have not been used to cannot SUDDENLY be imbibed when you get to Senior Lecturer, and so desperation can set in above Senior Lecturership. There really needs to be a new paradigm.
This is an outrageous and retrogressive system. It means that apart from those two promotions (SL to AP and AP to Full), promotion in Nigerian university is purely a thing of seniority, of marking time. You can simply just wait out your promotion clock and do nothing to earn it. How can salary increases simply be a matter of "time on level" or longevity and not take into account "differences in productivity" for goodness sake. ASUU is complicit in this civil-servantization of the Nigerian academic profession.
We are doing violence to our children and the nation by preserving and rationalizing such a backward, broken, and laziness-subsidizing system. And I appreciate you talking about the shock and desperation that plague Senior Lecturers who suddenly discover that they have to earn promotion to the next rank through scholarly output, and cannot simply wait out the clock. Yet another dimension that is equally worrisome is when people are promoted to Full Professor in the Nigerian system and basically become expensive, useless burdens on universities. I have it on the words of many of our colleagues in Nigeria that many people treat promotion to full professor as a license to not teach or research but to semi-retire into a life of professorial perks without doing anything further. They simply go through the motions, show up a few times to class, are seldom available to graduate students, and do not conduct new research or publish new materials. They have arrived, and it is their time to enjoy. This doesn't surprise me at all, for why should they conduct new research, publish, or show up to teach when doing so will not get them individual raises and when they are, until they retire, protected by ASUU agreements from being held accountable for their poor teaching. In the US, there is also a similar problem of full professors simply relaxing and enjoying the comforts of tenure. However, merit pay raises and other individuated rewards tied to scholarly productivity mitigate this problem.
And, finally, I completely agree with you that "there really needs to be a new paradigm." I hope these conversations continue and lead us to that new paradigm because we have on our hands a broken system that was inadvertently created by ASUU's past victories, which demanded little or nothing of academics in exchange for the remunerative and structural investments made into the faculty and landscapes of our universities.
On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 4:01 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Colleagues:I completely agree with Obi Nwakanma below: always comparing the USA with Nigeria with respect to our university system is not entirely helpful.1. First, Nigeria has a central regulatory body - the National Universities Commission NUC - the USA does not. Unfortunately, NUC does go quite beyond standards and accreditation - but that is the subject of another symposium.2. There are currently 79 public [40 Federal Universities, 39 State Universities] and 50 Private Universities, with the private ones divided between single-proprietor (approx. 18), sectarian (approx. 31) and community (one) universities. See http://www.nuc.edu.ng/pages/universities.asp. Due to the heavy dependence of the states on the federal government for their funding, all the public universities are in effect FEDERAL universities (directly or indirectly), and now TETFUND is providing funds in one form or the other for ALL of them. Private universities are now clamoring for inclusion. In the US, only Howard University and Gallaudet University (and the military schools) can be considered FEDERAL universities. All the others are STATE- or COMMUNITY-owned, along with a vast array of private universities and colleges - a total of over 4,500. [Here is a relevant Wikipedia information: QUOTE As of 2011, the latest figures available in 2014, the US has a total of 4,599 Title IV-eligible, degree-granting institutions: 2,870 4-year institutions and 1,729 2-year institutions.[1] The US had 21 million students in higher education, roughly 5.7% of the total population. About 13 million of these students were enrolled full-time which was 81,000 students lower than 2010 UNQUOTE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_the_United_States]3. Salaries in Nigeria of ALL university staff are set and published by the National Salaries and Wages Commission [see http://nsiwc.gov.ng/] on the CONTISS, CONUASS, CONMESS and CONHESS scales. Two professors at the same CONUASS 7 level, whether of Engineering or of Yoruba or Arabic Studies, earn the same salary. Even within a university in the US, the STARTING salary ranges are very fluid, and RARELY do you know or care about your colleagues' salary. And when you know, it either spurs you to greater productivity - ehn, you can earn this much? - or batten you down with despondency - "how can someone earn this much more than myself? Life is not fair..."4. It is not only ASUU (both an academic and a trade union) that "harasses" government and university management in Nigeria, but NASU, and SSANU, and NAATS (who make no pretenses to be academic associations) , each looking at each other's temporary collective bargaining gains, and upping their demands in response to such gains. This is not the case in the US, as AAUP's power is locale-dependent.5. All Senates in Nigeria are in essence ACADEMIC UNIVERSITY SENATES, with the Vice-Chancellor its Chairman, and membership via rank and positions (eg all professors, directors, etc.) . In the US, there are indeed some of such Senates, but there are also mostly FACULTY SENATES, elected persons from the various faculties and units of the University. Being the highest deliberative body, whether you have an Academic Senate or a Faculty Senate matters.6. Except for the move from Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor, or from Associate Professor to Professor, the promotion system in Nigeria appears to be more time-bound (ie length of time spent in a given rank) more than productivity in a given rank. The salary increase system is also based on time on level, independent of differences in productivity. The problem is that what you have not been used to cannot SUDDENLY be imbibed when you get to Senior Lecturer, and so desperation can set in above Senior Lecturership. There really needs to be a new paradigm.So that we are not just talking, let us take a concrete situation...at Otuoke.In my new university, I am asking the Senate to CONSIDER a Faculty Evaluation System that does three things:1. enables each academic staff to SET its own evaluation standard based on Load distributed between Teaching (Minimum 51%), Research (Minimum 10%), Community Service (Minimum 10%) and Entrepreneurship (Minimum 4%). This puts teaching in some primacy, but allows the active researcher to assign as much as 35% of his time to research - but he or she must justify it in terms of grantsmanship (number, size, graduate students mentored and graduated).2. allows evaluations BASED on those self-chosen allocations.3. provides integrity in the process by asking for DOCUMENTATION - of time used, talent deployed and treasures (money and commendations) obtained while doing your job. This is important, because lecturers are well known to pad their activities year in year out, and obtain raises based on the same useless activities that they stated in the previous year.4. gives the candidate the opportunity for self-evaluation for EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE. It is not just the AVERAGE performance that one should be looking for, but what do you think that you are doing that is EXCEPTIONAL. If you cannot state it yourself, it is unlikely that you are doing it.I have attached a draft form for your collective comments. Again, it is a draft that is being circulated among my university staff concocted SOLELY by me for now and tweaked from my experience at Howard University and elsewhere of staff evaluations. Clearly, as VC, I have a right to ask for proper documentation of how a prospective candidate for advancement is contributing to the ecumene of the university before I put in that final John Hancock after all other evaluations.And there you have it.Bolaji AlukoOn Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 2:46 AM, Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com> wrote:Moses,To frame our responses to the questions around Nigeria, it is sometimes important to look closely at Nigeria's unique reality. If I understand you clearly, your critique of ASUU's model for collective bargaining is underscored by your preference for the US model, driven by "special interests" rather than by collective interests. In sum, you prefer the model which allows for more variant negotiation, in which those "some academics are going to be more productive in research and teaching than others and fairness demands that they be paid more to both reward and encourage them."In your view ASUU's use of a centralized negotiation platform to create equal, invariant remuneration for academics disobeys some natural economic law. But I will leave this to behavioral economists to discern. I will only say this and very briefly: there is nothing wrong with ASUU's model of unionizing. It is neither antiquated nor retrogressive nor reductive. It is in fact more progressive than the Darwinist method you favour very indiscriminately. Nigeria's Universities are national universities and are founded on the unique paradigm that makes it necessary for nations like Nigeria, in their current stages of development to utilize the state system to create and sustain its knowledge production centers. Equal and standardized emolument for academics is a fine model, whose strenght lies in its capacity to sustain a central mission of the academy: to create collegiality among faculty and encourage multidisciplinary interaction between the fields. It allows for instance a beneficial context in which university or collegial systems see the relationship between the Fine & Applied Arts to Engineering, or the complex interaction between linguistics and mathematics. It creates a level playing field, in which no work is considered more valuable in the true search for knowledge.As for the rewards system: it is already encoded in the ASUU model in which your work in research and publications is the grounds on which you advance to the professoriate. I think you underestimate the real significance of the work ASUU does, either out of misinformation or sheer ignorance. The problem is not merely that ASUU asks for livable emolument for Academics. Sometimes, what ASUU demands is for some strategic infrastructural update - the rehabilitation of the learning environment for both students and teachers. They also ask for new governing principles that would free the universities from tyrannical governance, encourage more funding for research, and provide the minimum standards for a National Universities system in which a central mission is defined by a National Universities Commission. It is quite different here in the US, say, in which private Universities established by Trust exist side by side with Public Universities, which have become increasingly corporatized. Nigeria's national goals as a developing economy requires, in part, a national universities system, funded out of a public Trust. Its stage and its mission are quite different from the US system which you seem to adopt as a model.My main critique of ASUU is in its organizational model. At this stage ASUU should have a lobbying capacity that could push its agenda, just like the NEA, so that it would have greater, more efficient bargaining and disseminating capacity. Before ASUU, individual Universities had their various University Staff Associations with specific bargaining authority. There was an imperative that pushed them to fuse into a National, more centralized body. I think it was a great idea to create a National Union. In 1987, when the military made membership of the various University Students Unions voluntary, it destroyed the capacity of Students to create the kind of synergy that allowed them to speak to the long term interests of Nigerian students. If ASUU begins to seek for variant and decentralized bargaining authority, it may lead to far more complex problems. In actual fact, the challenge of the American academy in the next decade will be writ large when it is no longer able to attract a particular quality of intellect and work in certain areas of the Academy, and the obvious diminishing of the once great American public university system will become rather clear and obvious. It is also not for nothing, that the laws that limit unionization is cruder in states run by more conservative legislature and governors. So, you go figure.I think folk should understand that some of the guys in ASUU are not dumb, and are not as selfish as some make them to to be; nor are they any less forward-thinking. Living across the swell of the Atlantic does not make you smarter or more informed about the condition of the academy. In actual fact, I think that ASUU's engagement with the governments of Nigeria has led to interesting contemporary developments in the academy, among which, the creation of a National Research Fund, the TETFUND, which anyone with actionable research ideas could access must be noted. There are moments when we must celebrate the work of these Nigerians. Nigeria is not always some dark abyss waiting for an alien light to fall upon it. Light exists there too. And ASUU has done some remarkable work for which we need to commend it.Obi Nwakanma
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 12:58:29 -0600
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: UNIVERSITY RESEARCH GRANTS IN SEARCH OF GRANTEES?
From: meochonu@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comHi Gloria,First the AAUP is not a trade union in the conventional sense. It is a professional association set up "to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good," as its website clearly states. Although it has a union component (the AAUP-CBC), the overwhelming majority of the association's branches are not unionized and thus do not engage in any form of collective bargaining. Only a tiny fraction of branches in a few schools in a few states are unionized. A list is available on the association's website. And these few branches represent less than five percent of public schools. Moreover, these few branches do their bargaining on an institutional basis, not at the state level, let alone at the national level. This makes the AAUP an advocacy organization primarily. Compare this with ASUU, where collective bargaining is done nationally in a tyrannical, top-down, Central Planning fashion that does not take into cognizance local and institutional, let alone, individual variances. The institutional branches of ASUU do not have independent bargaining rights over compensation and remuneration, and salaries and benefits are predetermined on a scale agreed nationally. What an outdated, retrogressive system!Second, as you know both in the public and private university system in the States (with very few exceptions where there are local unionized branches of the AAUP), compensation is not subject to collective bargaining and is set by states, boards of regents, institutions, and, even more crucially, compensation is individuated and tied to productivity and not rank.The problem with ASUU, which I was criticizing is a multi-pronged one.1. Academics are not civil servants or factory workers who have to be paid the same centrally and collectively bargained salaries for the same rank. We are not engaged in a uniform, bureaucratized set of duties that can be compensated uniformly. Such a template is fundamentally at variance with the nature of the academic enterprise because some academics are going to be more productive in research and teaching than others and fairness demands that they be paid more to both reward and encourage them, hence individuated salaries within a broad range are the norm in current global academic culture. It is a mechanism for encouraging research productivity and to discourage laziness. ASUU's insistence on collective bargaining covering all Nigerian university lecturers in the public university system violates this foundational imperative. It is out of place in our modern academic culture, especially in the third world, where the need to encourage excellence in research and teaching through compensation and promotion practices is greater. This is what I referred to as an outmoded trade union template from the 1970s. Today, such a system has clearly become part of the problem of higher education in Nigeria, which Professor Olukotun is right to draw attention to. I personally know colleagues in Nigeria who are as productive (in terms of both quality and quantity) if not more productive than those of us in America but who are being out-earned by older deadweights with little or no publication profiles to their names--or are stuck on the same remunerative scales with peers and colleagues who teach badly if at all and have stalled research lives. The latter are being rewarded for seniority and/or for merely fulfilling the bare minimum of standards required in a non-tenure system in which employment in the academic sector is basically a lifetime appointment, barring egregious infractions. Thanks to the outdated model of centralized, collectively bargained national academic salaries, there is absolutely nothing by way of compensation to distinguish between hard working, productive, and passionate academics and young and old deadweights who are merely engaged in the perfunctory march to professorships, which they can then parlay into other side gigs. The long and short of it is that the trade union template of the 1970s and 1980s, of the Cold War economy and academy, is inadequate for today's higher educational realities. Collectively bargained national academic salaries seemed to make sense in the context of the SAP-induced collapse of the higher education system in Nigeria in the 1980s and early 1990s, but seeing how this has stifled research excellence and subsidized laziness and complacency, surely we can agree that it is no longer relevant and has itself become part of the problem. The fact that so much research money has been made available to Nigerian researchers but this money remains largely unused because of a paucity of applications tells me that Nigerian academics no longer have an incentive to engage in new or innovative research, especially those who have attained the rank of professor. What's the incentive for doing new research when that would not lead to an improvement in your already centrally determined compensation package? You know that if you merely teach your courses and recycle research you did for your dissertation/doctoral work, you're good to go and will indeed go to the peak, where, as a perverse perk, you no longer have to do any new work because there is no reason for you to do so.2. ASUU, as I've been saying, suffers from a crisis of identity. When it suits them, they claim to be a traditional union fighting, like all unions, for better compensation and conditions for their members. This identity rhetoric often emerge with clarity when ASUU's unceasing remunerative demands come under questioning from the Nigerian public and from critics like me. At other times, when their failures, resistance to accountability, and tactical obsolescence are pointed out, ASUU folks say as a way of deflecting criticisms that they are not simply a trade union but also a reform advocacy group trying to improve standards in Nigerian higher education. The truth is that ASUU need to decide what they want to be so that folks will evaluate them on that account and criticize them when they fail to live up to the terms of their avowed identity. For instance, a reform organization cannot stand in the way of what everyone recognizes as the problem of poor and absent teaching in Nigerian universities, the problem of lack of accountability on the part of professors. A body truly committed to reform would be pushing for solutions that insist on quality control and quality improvement in the research culture (if it can be called that) of Nigerian university. ASUU, in typical outmoded trade union mode, sees these imperatives as assaults on its members instead of efforts to save the Nigerian university system. ASUU needs search its soul and resolve this contradiction. The AAUP model is actually a very good one. The association is primarily an advocacy organization but it has a few affiliated branches and a few schools that engage in bargaining at the local level, and it also has a foundation component, which works to provide economic security and legal protection for retired, disabled, and unjustly treated members. Trade unions are evolving everywhere to respond to changing times and changing economic imperatives. They are, sometimes unprompted, pragmatically embracing self-critical measures and concessions that would have been considered trade union treason in the 1960s and 1970s. Self reinvention is a constant fact of life. Besides, trade unions alone, with all their ideological and and tactical incestuousness, are often incapable of seeing their own mistakes and blind spots let alone the merits in innovative, hybrid solutions and compromises advanced by critics and in solution-oriented discourses.Finally, I agree with you that South Africa, which Olukotun referenced, is not a good model for meritocracy and for using research excellence to determine compensation and promotion, given the compelling arguments in the article posted on this forum a couple of weeks ago about how this system is rigged in favor of white, old boys academic networks and against aspirational black academics in that country. However, there are several global examples where individuated remuneration and recognition constitute an incentive for research productivity, research quality, and a disincentive for laziness and complacency and are working fairly well as incentives for research productive and excellence.On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 7:56 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu> wrote:"The current ASUU template of collective uniform bargaining and uniform reward is a drag on Nigerian higher education."
Trade unions, by definition, rely on collective bargaining and rewards.
So is the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and other
such organizations around the world.
Why should ASUU be an exception? Last week, here in Connecticut, the AAUP got into action to pre-empt
a planned centralization of eighteen state funded institutions of higher learning. The AAUP fears that this would lead to job cuts,
layoffs and loss of academic freedom.A few years ago, politicians in Connecticut tried to impose pay cuts and job losses
but they had to back down somewhat because of union solidarity and action.
Anti- labor/ right wing advocates always tend to blame trade unions but these unions have been crucial in bringing
about changes in the workplace, fairness in wages and improved conditions and rights.
"Would ASUU, moreover, allow the kind of quality control and scrutiny.............. "
I am told that the whites, who control South African universities, systematically exclude Blacks from publishing in the 'credible' journals
they invariably control.
When a biased or racist group defines journal or book "credibility" and ties this to promotion and pay, the end result may be
total exclusion and victimization of targeted groups. That is the easiest way for a clique to dominate the university system
and keep others out indefinitely.
South Africa is not a good role model on this issue.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
africahistory.net
________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meochonu@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2014 11:53 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: UNIVERSITY RESEARCH GRANTS IN SEARCH OF GRANTEES?
"One way therefore of closing the research gap is to attach more importance to academic output based on research in the promotion of academics. This would mean for example that far less recognition will be given to the production of text books which are drawn mainly from the classroom notes of the lecturers. In the same vein, so-called journal articles which do not significantly advance the literature in the discipline or open new lines of theoretical thinking will be lowly rated by promotion committees. On the positive side, academics that undertake research and publish their findings in credible journals should be entitled to bonuses and additional pay as it is the practice in some universities in South Africa."
---Professor Olukotun,
A wonderful suggestion, one which echoes what I have been screaming about on this forum, but the sixty four thousand dollar question is, will ASUU allow this? Will ASUU's insistence on an archaic model of academic valuation, compensation, and bargaining allow for the kind of meritocratic flexibility Professor Olukotun is suggesting? ASUU's existential anxieties would only be heightened by such a system, which would curb the backward-looking tyranny of that body. I'm not necessarily suggesting anything sinister about ASUU, but by caring more about its existence and continued relevance than about quality research and teaching in our universities and how these two foundational academic enterprises are rewarded and recognized, the ASUU folks have placed themselves ahead of the line as the preeminent underwriters of poor teaching and research in Nigerian academe. They will lament and decry but when it comes to allowing reform or simply getting out the way to allow innovative global academic practices of excellence to take root, they will brandish their trade union struggle manual from the 1970s and dust up hackneyed talking points long rendered irrelevant by recent events in Nigerian higher education and the the global knowledge economy.
The current ASUU template of collective uniform bargaining and uniform reward is a drag on Nigerian higher education. The failure to decentralize the connection between research and publication on the one hand and promotion/reward on the other shortchanges and discourages the few research-oriented, productive, and hardworking academics and in the system while protecting those whose lack of productivity should stall their upward mobility. It also breeds and subsidizes laziness, complacency, and incompetence, perpetuating the problem of poor teaching and lack of serious research that is the bane of higher education in Nigeria. As long as ASUU's outmoded 1960s era model is the arbiter of what gets valued or devalued for promotion and compensation purposes, you're going to keep having poor teachers and poor researchers being promoted by simply going through the motions of academic life.
Would ASUU, moreover, allow the kind of quality control and scrutiny Professor Olukotun is advancing in place of the current bean counting practice of the NUC/ASUU publication evaluation template? More crucially, for me, would Professor Olukotun have the liberty, latitude, and independence to speak so bluntly about the culpability of ASUU and ASUU-affiliated academics if he were in the public university system, a member of ASUU and a beneficiary of its bargaining victories that have ironically become stumbling blocks on the path of reform and accountability?
On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 9:20 PM, ayo_olukotun via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
________________________________
From: Tunde Oseni <tundeoseni@gmail.com<mailto:tundeoseni@gmail.com>>
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 09:34:17 +0100
To: ayo_olukotun<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com<mailto:ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>>
Subject: UNIVERSITY RESEARCH GRANTS IN SEARCH OF GRANTEES?
UNIVERSITY RESEARCH GRANTS IN SEARCH OF GRANTEES?
Ayo Olukotun
'In a situation of prolonged decline and decay what needs re-building is more than just the infrastructure but also the ethos and the ethics of the academy' Jimi Adesina
To begin with our usual tit bits, consider how uplifting and therapeutic it was to learn that celebrated scholar, award winning poet and essayist, Niyi Osundare has been named winner of this year's National Merit Award. In a clime where good news is in short supply, it comes as refreshing drops of water, massaging parched throats. Of course, some may complain and validly too that it took this long for Osundare's distinction to be recognized by his countrymen but it's better late than never.
No stranger to awards, Osundare has been the recipient of the Fonion Nicholas award for Excellence in Literary Creativity and Significant contribution to Human Rights in Africa; the Norman Award, perhaps the most prestigious book prize for new work in Africa, which he won in 1991, among several others. What is especially regaling about this notice is that it came to someone who has been anything but sparing of the official cant and bumbling of successive Nigerian governments. Under the military, for example, the poet kept going a vibrant and lively observatory on the brutal excesses of the dictators, exploring the borders of permissible criticisms under cruel dictatorships. Needless it is to recall that his daring earned him several unwanted visits by the state security apparatus which consigned him to a blacklist. Truly one of our best and brightest, his prolific output has inspired and edified many. A fortnight ago, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), on the occasion of receiving a honourary Doctorate in Law from the University of Ibadan, made it known that he cut his milk teeth in literary matters by sitting at the feet of Osundare. The poet of the people, as he is called, Osundare demystified poetry by bringing it to our door steps wrapped in idioms drawn from nature and the melody of African life. Said he: 'poetry is the eloquence of the gong/ It is what the soft wind/music to the listening muse'. May his verses, virtue and verve continue to reverberate edifyingly to our benefit.
Take this along too. Renowned social critic and principal of Mayflower School, Ikenne, Tai Solarin came alive in a convocation lecture delivered on Wednesday by distinguished history professor, Toyin Falola, who is also the President of the African Studies Association. Going down memory lane to exhume the exploits of one of our heroes past, Falola argues that the nation is in need of visioners like Tai Solarin who are also imbued with a civic conscience and a passion for mentoring. Isolating the entrepreneurial skills which Solarin impacted to students of Mayflower, Falola submits that in a season when the prize of our oil is fluctuating like a yoyo, 'our educational goal should be able to make food available, plan cities, supply energy and run services'. Well said.
Now the main course; some newspapers have expressed consternation about a recent statement made by the minister of education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau to the effect that a lot of research money set aside by government under the Education Trust Fund is sitting pretty idle unused. The argument that has been made is that if indeed underfunding has been the bane of our universities and the reason therefore for ruptured calendars, how come our academics are not availing themselves of these funds believed to be in the neighbourhood of 3 billion naira? To unravel the mystery, this writer called up Professor Femi Bamiro, former vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan and chairman TETFUND's screening/monitoring committee. Bamiro explained that his committee spent some time drawing up a research agenda in order to provide the template for administering the funds and screening applicants. He went on to say that out of 150 or so applications received in the last cycle only 30 met the standard set by his committee.
What is the problem? The scholar believes that there are issues of capacity in the universities which relate to inability to set out lucid proposals for funding. 'Grantsmanship' as one other academic, Prof Tiwa Olugbade calls it refers to the skill required to articulate research proposals in order to attract funding. Obviously, such attributes are not easy to come by in our universities. The opening quote drawn from Professor Jimi Adesina provides a clue to the underlying problem, namely that the decay which set in into the Nigerian academic culture in the late 1980s and 1990s washed over to affect the academic culture.
As is well known, several journals in our universities once had global appeal. Regrettably, very few of these journals or the epistemic schools that they represent have survived till today. More frequently, one encounters what one academic has described acerbically as fast food journals some of which die after the publication of Volume 1 Number 1.
To return to the point, it may startle but it is true that money set aside by some of our universities as research grants are rarely exhausted and since they could not be used for other purposes are returned unspent year after year. To be sure, and to take a somewhat global perspective, less than half of universities in the United States and other countries are truly research-oriented. There are diverse institutions many of which prioritize a teaching culture and do not take research all that seriously. Indeed, a debate rages as to whether the teaching of undergraduates is not being swallowed up by frenetic research activities in some institutions. This debate notwithstanding, the reality is that it is the quality of research in a university and consequently of its publications that situates it on the world map. Moreover, research should all the more be encouraged in universities in the developing world which have not had the advantage of drawing upon centuries of accumulated knowledge in solving problems.
One way therefore of closing the research gap is to attach more importance to academic output based on research in the promotion of academics. This would mean for example that far less recognition will be given to the production of text books which are drawn mainly from the classroom notes of the lecturers. In the same vein, so-called journal articles which do not significantly advance the literature in the discipline or open new lines of theoretical thinking will be lowly rated by promotion committees. On the positive side, academics that undertake research and publish their findings in credible journals should be entitled to bonuses and additional pay as it is the practice in some universities in South Africa.
In sum, research activity is low on the agenda of our universities because we have not attached particular incentives to it. It is also true as Bamiro argues that the universities must focus more on issues of training and building academic capacity in the area of research. The under-subscription by our academics of the National Research Fund indexes the current state of our academic culture; but we can begin to slowly re-build the comatose research tradition until it becomes once again globally competitive.
Prof Olukotun is the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Lead City University, Ibadan
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com<mailto:USAAfricaDialogue%2Bsubscribe@googlegroups.com>
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
---Mohandas Gandhi
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment