Tenure, if you want to call it that, comes with hiring unless it's contract appointment, and as Bolaji said, only promotion to Associate Professor or Reader and to Full Professor demand publications. Otherwise, once you're employed, you have a job until you retire (70 years, I think) and can be promoted up to Senior Lecturer by simply waiting, like a civil servant, to spend enough time on a rank before being promoted to the next.
I delayed my response in hope that some more experienced senior academics on this list will respond to the above quotation. The process of promotion of academics in Nigerian universities that I am familiar with is based on a set of prescribed criteria for transitioning from one rank to the next. I read the submission of the FUO VC that was referenced, and it was suggested that academic staff promotion is not based on publications. As far as I know, promotion of academics from Assistant Lecturer upwards is based on sets of prescribed criteria, of which the waiting period of three years is the most basic. What the waiting period implies is that an academic is not eligible for consideration for promotion if her last promotion occurred earlier than three years. There are other criteria which an eligible candidate needs to satisfy before she can be promoted. That a person has been on a rank for three years does not automatically mean that she would advance to the next rank unless the stipulated criteria are met. The criteria include:
1. a favourable report from the Departmental Appointment and Promotion Committee (A&PC) and the Head of Department.
2. a favourable report from the Faculty A&PC.
3. a waiting period of three years at each rank before qualification for (consideration for) promotion.
4. Possession of a Ph.D degree is mandatory for candidates applying for promotion to Senior Lecturer, Readership and Professor. Promotion to other
ranks (Lecturer II and Lecturer I) may be attained with a Masters degree, and the relevant number of publications stipulated for the rank for which an academic is being considered.
5. There is a stipulated number of publications in reputable journals and/ or in standard texts which an academic must have published following the last promotion, before s/he can be considered.
6. Two positive reports from external assessors are required for candidates up for promotion to either Reader or professor.
I think there may be confusion with the nature of assessment of the publications in question. Promotion from Assistant Lecturer to Lecturer II, Lecturer II to Lecturer I or Lecturer I to Senior Lecturer, is normally done internally in a university. This is carried out at two levels, first by the departmental A&PC which then recommends the candidate to the Faculty A&PC, which also recommends the candidate to the Senate (A&PC), after satisfying itself that the candidate has met the prescribed criteria. In cases where there is no academic of sufficient seniority and experience within the department in a candidate's field of specialisation, the candidate's publications are sent out to other universities with senior academics in that field for assessment.
Promotion to Readership and Professorship is normally done externally. The publications are sent for external assessment by at least three leading academics in other institutions. It is expected that at least two of such assessments must be favourable (within the assessment year) before the promotion can be pronounced.
So unlike regular civil servants, all academics are measured against prescribed publications criteria which you are presented with when you are first appointed. I have experienced it and I know colleagues who were not promoted because they did not satisfy the requirements in relation to publication. May I also add that only full professors are eligible to stay on the job till 70 years.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.From: Tunde Oseni <tunde...@gmail.com>Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 09:34:17 +0100To: ayo_olukotun<ayo_ol...@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
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