Conversion of technical and vocational skills-imparting polytechnics into universities in Nigeria is a common phenomenon that I find concern...
Conversion of technical and vocational skills-imparting polytechnics into universities in Nigeria is a common phenomenon that I find concerning. Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, which has the status of a polytechnic, has been in the news regarding this in the past couple of years. The matter is back in the news once more. Latest news reports indicate that federal education authorities, the school management, and staff members are fully part of the effort to confer a university status on YABATECH. So, I ask, to achieve what purpose is YABATECH to be turned into a university? What would YABATECH achieve as a university that it cannot achieve as a polytechnic, fulfilling its core mandate of producing technical and vocational skilled manpower? In any case, is conferring a university status the reward for the achievement of world-class excellence that should be the focus of this tertiary institution? It was a question I asked the last time I intervened in this matter, and I continue from where I left off.
Excellent polytechnics in other climes pursue even greater excellence, the world-class type, not a change of status into a university. It’s the first point I make here before I move to others. In the argument for a university status, it’s stated that YABATECH is the oldest of its type in Nigeria. Certainly, the school has produced generations of students. But churning out students isn’t where it stops for any tertiary institution. For it is in this same nation that many say graduates from tertiary institutions cannot practice what they learn, that mechanical engineers cannot repair their own power generators. They invite a generator repairer who has the technical skills. Now, YABATECH, where technical expertise along with academic qualifications is imparted to Nigerians, will be changed to a university, where a theoretical approach is more the norm.
Note that currently, the National Board of Technical Education and the Ministry of Education are trying to encourage Nigerians to acquire technical skills. Non-repayable funding and stipends are a part of the package for artisans who attend technical colleges to give them skills that are up-to-date. In some other nations, universities are converted to polytechnics and, in fact, China has converted about 600 universities into polytechnics. At YABATECH, which offers technical and vocational education, it is a different story. One would assume that at this stage, this institution should be pursuing other world-class aspirations in the area of its mandate, as schools of equal status across the world do. One would expect YABATECH to focus on having a strong faculty that is crucial for delivering quality education, fostering a culture of academic excellence, and providing opportunities for students to engage in research and other scholarly activities here and abroad. It should be improving on its high graduation and placement rates for graduates, which indicate the institution’s effectiveness in preparing students for their chosen careers.
YABATECH should be focused on improving the performance indicators relating to research, teaching, employability and internationalisation. It should be focused on improving its academic reputation, which ensures it rates high among academics globally who can attest to YABATECH as the leading institution in their field. YABATECH should be improving its employer reputation; this is usually based on a global survey of employers who identify the institutions producing the best graduates in their sector. It should be bent on being the best in research citations per faculty member, which reflects the impact of an institution’s research.
YABATECH should be thinking of improving its proportion of international students, which is a measure of its success in attracting students from overseas. It should work on improving the quality of teaching, which is assessed based on a reputation survey, as well as improve its staff-to-student ratio, doctorates-awarded-to-academic-staff ratio, and institutional income. It should improve on the number of research papers published per faculty member, research citations, as well as its international outlook. There is the task of improving the number of papers published in influential journals, the number of papers indexed, and other relevant indicators of excellence. An old institution like YABATECH should be working towards becoming a world-class institution in its category. It is here that it can add to Nigeria’s reputation, bringing accolades to Africa in general.
It should consider its next developmental phase that of being a polytechnic that excels in providing technical and practical education, fostering innovation, and contributing to economic growth. Instead, it is becoming a university that YABATECH focuses on. Should governments encourage this pattern that is now common in Nigeria? Turning polytechnics and colleges into universities is what national and sub-national governments do. Then, new polytechnics are established. The National Assembly regularly approves bills to create new polytechnics. This is absurd. There is a feel of levity about a serious national matter. It is a step that obliterates legacy. It destroys incremental improvement on past achievements. It doesn’t indicate an understanding of why polytechnics exist in the first place.
Existing polytechnics ought to consolidate and leverage on years of experience to achieve greater heights in the area of their mandate. This can’t happen when existing polytechnics are obliterated regularly. New universities should be established from scratch. It doesn’t help the nation that old polytechnics are turned into universities and they lose all the years of accumulated expertise in their category.
They should remain as light to others coming up. For they have this institutional memory that new polytechnics as well as our nation in general, can benefit from. In the effort to justify its push to acquire a university status, YABATECH says it has many doctoral holders. To me, this should be one of the criteria to rate YABATCH as a polytechnic where the standards of its faculty are the highest among its type.
In any case, when polytechnic lecturers have doctorates and they desire to bear the title of professor, I suppose they can apply and join existing universities. But in Nigeria, people working in polytechnics want to turn their schools into a university to become professors. In whose interest is this quest – nation or individuals? What is the benefit for Nigeria? It’s a question education authorities need to ask and answer. By turning polytechnics into universities, the reason for establishing polytechnics as skills-imparting institutions is defeated. Then tomorrow, even those who decide to turn polytechnics into universities, will join others to lament that Nigeria has university graduates who can’t practise what they learn.
This matter brings me to our general attitude in this nation. Often, focus is lost on the philosophy or principle behind establishing some institutions. In the event, we pursue what amounts to personal aggrandisement rather than adhere to the philosophy behind the mandates of the places where we work. Rather than workers working to be the best, make their institution the best, and make a name for themselves in their professional fields, they want to be like others. For instance, the right to bear the title “Dr” is what pharmacists and others in medical line are now focused on achieving. They don’t seek to be ranked as the “best pharmacists” in the world. There is that situation too where nurses engage in industrial action, seeking to be at per with medical doctors when they should strive to be ranked as the “best nurses” in the world. Similar situations abound across professions and institutions in Nigeria.
Unlike some Federal Court of Appeal presidents who prefer to retire as head rather than go queue as junior judges with a promotion to the Supreme Court, YABATECH wants to jettison whatever high ranking it already has as a polytechnic. It prefers to queue up at the lowest rung of the ladder, start all over again, in the category of universities in Nigeria and across the world, just to meet the desires of individuals who wish to become professors. One again, here, we see people band together to demand something and governments accede whether or not such a demand fits into overall national goals and aspirations. How this nation allows individual desires to submerge overall national objectives never ceases to baffle me. For it seems we have no boundaries regarding what is appropriate for the nation that must never be breached. How this situation can lead to the development that we seek is what all of us have to ponder.
Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
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