Restoring Sanity in Nigeria’s University Education

By

Victor E. Dike

vdike@cwnet.com

 

 

The role of education in the development of a society and the pathetic stories about Nigeria’s university education has been vastly documented in academic journals and this article does not intend to revisit that. It suffices to note here that the state of education is one of the crucial indicators of the seriousness of a society in its quest for national development because the quality of education in a society determines the quality of its leaders and the pace of social development. Universities (higher institutions) in advanced and well-organized societies are the center of social activities and the environment provides good settings for research, teaching and learning. But, the culture of corruption has prevented Nigeria from providing good quality education to the youth to prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century economy.

 

Nevertheless, the nation’s educational system has transited from the indigenous system where mature men instructed the youths in personal up keeping and resource management, good citizenship and community responsibilities, to the formal Western education brought by the missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1960s schools were properly administered and discipline was enforced. The quality of graduates was high and certificates awarded by the schools were equal to those awarded by schools in the West. Demand for higher education in Nigeria increased during the oil boom of the 1970s and the number of students increased without commensurate funding. However, things went really sour in the late 1980s, and education was neglected; and the quality of graduates has since been compromised, affecting every facet of the society. In the 1990s, some of the loans from the World Bank for education were used to purchase irrelevant books and “expensive equipment” that could not be maintained.

 

Funding for education has not been commensurate with the demand of the education sector. Reportedly, the percentage of federal budgetary allocation to education has been dwindling. It was 7.2% in 1995 and 4.5% in 2004. The condition becomes more pathetic when Nigeria’s Gross National Product (GNP) allocation to education is compared with those of less affluent African nations that allocate greater percentage: Cote d' Ivoria allocates 5% of its GNP to education, Kenya 6.5% and Nigeria 0.76%. Lack teaching tools and poor remuneration has contributed to “acute shortage of qualified teachers” that leads to the falling standard of university education. More revealing is the 2006 ranking of African universities in which Nigerian universities, that were once highly rated, were behind universities in poorer countries.

 

Good education is the best way to prepare a nation for excellence. Without good education and proper skill how would the people grow, develop and compete effectively in the rapidly changing global economy? The failure of the government to implement its agreement with university teachers prompted the 2003 ASUU strike that lasted for about six months. This exacerbated the mass exodus (‘brain-drain’) of experienced Professors to countries with better working conditions; not much has changed because ASUU is still warming up for more strike actions. How would the nation ensure a sustainable growth development without investing in the educational sector? How would the society train the critical and creative minds to manage her democratic process without investing copiously on human capital development? How would the youth compete effectively in the global market place without giving the citizens the skills and knowledge to produce high quality goods and services?

 

Education is the cornerstone of a nation; something is obviously wrong with any society that does not take its educational institutions seriously. Corruption and mismanagement of funds should be checked in the university system; a corrupt society begets corrupt students and sordid educational institutions. The neglect of the sector has created many problems in the society, including cultism and cheating in examinations, poor quality graduates, unemployment and poverty. Rising moral laxity and gross in-discipline in schools are others. With all these the students are not making maximum use of the available resources, as they are chasing the dollar instead of studying. Parents provide the primary education and support to their children in early life; thus they should help in redirecting their attention to education and should be made to understand education should be their priority, if they expect to compete effectively in the emerging computerized global economy.

 

The problems with university education in Nigeria are many. The process of restoring sanity to higher education should start with motivating the educators to increase their level of “psychological satisfaction” to enable them to perform well because poor working condition is dissuading talented individuals from entering the teaching profession. A good quality education could refine and strengthen a person’s innate ability. Great schools train great minds; and great teachers mean great schools! Teachers should not be over burdened with classes - some lecturers in Nigerian universities are said to teach up to six courses per semester. That’s a lot of course load. However, teachers are not expected to perform miracles without the necessary teaching tools. Schools need functional libraries and current book and modern laboratories and classrooms need modern instructional technologies and computers connected to the Internet, projectors, audio-visual and video conferencing equipment, et cetera.

 

School administrators and the government should develop the political will to restore sanity in the sector and motivate the students by providing them a healthy learning environment (modern classrooms and living quarters) and assist the needy with affordable loans and grants to finance their education. To improve the quality of graduates’ university admissions should be strictly on merit; and schools should offer courses that meet the challenges of the 21st century economy. Higher institutions should be granted full autonomy and allowed unfettered hands to source funds through private sector partnership. As this writer has noted elsewhere, higher education should not be free; Nigerian students should pay tuition and other fees. One could rightly complain about the quality of education (or any other service) if one pays for the service.  The restoration of higher institutions should be holistic by properly funding and staffing the primary and secondary schools that are the foundations of higher education.

 

Higher institutions should be allowed to conduct their private admission exams and screen the new intake within a standard set by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. For instance, in the United States, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for new entrants into the university are conducted at individual high schools during the final year (twelfth grade) of school and the universities are allowed to pick up students according to their scores. Any student that aspires to attend the top-ranking schools must have to struggle to have a high SAT score. Academic competition would enable the institutions to attract better quality teachers, improve the quality of university graduates and thus “rebuild a culture of scholarship” that has been neglected in the society. Without taking care of the students needs violence and cultism on the campuses will continue. The society could tackle the vices by redefining Nigeria’s value system and attending to the needs of the students; providing the student with enough recreational activities, attend to their medical and psychological needs, and provide adequate security on campuses, etc. The institutions should reduce student/instructor ratio (control the number of students enrolled in particular class) to give the instructors/students opportunity to interact and know each other. This would afford the students the opportunity to appraise the effectiveness of the instructors at the end of every course; this process helps the instructors to improve their teaching method and classroom management technique. The method of teaching in the university should shift from the traditional (theory-based) to progressive and pragmatic education (in-built practical application).

 

Learning and teaching strategies differ in the academic level of learners. When a teacher applies a wrong teaching strategy he/she gets a wrong outcome. As Cross (1981) has pointed out the learning environment for adult scholars are different from that of the younger ones. Adult learners prefer those who respect and teach adults as adults (andragogy) and not as kids (pedagogy). Andragogy theory is the art and science of helping adults learn, while pedagogy is the art and science of teaching of children (Knowles 1980). Adult learners prefer a classroom climate that is supportive, non-threatening, informal and relaxed - a non-threatening atmosphere is particularly important. Therefore, adult instructors should recognize this and apply appropriate teaching method to improve the learners’ performances (Knowles 1980, 1990 &1995). It is beyond the scope of this article to deal in-depth with the theories and styles. Adult learners prefer experts in their fields with first-hand job experience in the subject – those who are “well-organized with a well-planned course, a week-by-week schedule of class activities, and well-planned class meetings with a clear agenda” (Kelly, n/d). Such instructors would demonstrate how the scholars would apply the new information to their personal and professional lives and prevents an instructor would not waste the learners’ time ‘by driving all over the road.’

 

Granted that the nation’s university should be staffed by competent and highly educated professors, but the policy of hiring only Ph.Ds for teaching position may be counterproductive. Thus experienced career professionals (and gifted individual with passion for education and teaching) with good quality education at a graduate level (Masters Degree) could teach undergraduate classes at the university level in the area of specialty. It has been this way in many advanced nations, as the professionals bring in their hands-on life experiences to the classroom. There are a lot of differences between theory and practical education, which is lacking in the system. The best and brightest teachers are not all Ph.Ds; many scholars without Ph.Ds are known to have written outstanding academic textbooks that in use in the universities around the globe. The question is why should the universities use their work if they are not qualified to teach? This writer is not certain what prompted this policy by the National Universities Commission, but, what is the nation doing to train the number of Ph.Ds it needs to properly staff the university system?

 

Lack of proper supervision is part of the problem bedeviling the nation’s educational system. Nigeria’s education administrators are good at documenting the crucial problems facing the universities without solving the problems. Despite of their inability to provide the necessary resources for effective teaching and learning most of the existing universities are offering programs they are not capable to handle. Without laboratories and libraries virtually all the tertiary institutions in Nigeria -even those floating in the air- award degrees in Medicine and Engineering, etc. Individuals and organizations are rushing to establish private universities without serious plans on how to train the requisite manpower for the institutions. It is not good enough for the NUC to issue credentials to individuals to establish universities; any organization applying for a license to establish a university should be required to show concrete and serious plans for training or acquiring the needed teachers for the programs they intend to offer. Schools should only offer courses they are equipped to handle. New institutions should be required to operate for some years before being permitted to award degrees in some areas. In some societies new schools would operate for a while before venturing into the resources intensive programs.

 

The new Education Minister is not expected to perform any magic because of time constraint. However, the Minister could work on revising the curricula of the nation’s educational system to meet the current needs of the individual and the nation because the current system is not a reflection of the realities on the ground; it does not meet the needs of the country neither does it give the students the skills to compete effectively in the global economy. The Minister could work on creating a database for effective planning and management of the rising number of university students. In 2005, the nation had 779,253 students in the universities (Guardian, Sept 1, 2006). The society should treat the crisis in education as a public health issue that requires serious attention without which the youths will continue to receive inferior education. They will continue to suffer mass unemployment, armed robbery, and peddling and consumption of illegal drugs and other vices could worsen. Nigeria will continue to have illiterates as leaders and political parties without ideology and will continue to fall behind economically, socially and politically.

 

Victor E. Dike, CEO, Center for Social Justice and Human Development (CSJHD), Sacramento, California