30 September 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
Some federal universities have accused some new private universities of poaching their lecturers and also the NUC for not cross-checking their claims of having enough academy staff for their programmes. How do you react to this?
Why would NUC always bear these blames? If you read about the development of private universities in the US, Harvard University was founded in 1634, Yale in 1701. People moved from Harvard to Yale. People will always move from one university to the other. Poaching will continue. If they didn't go to another university, they could leave the system. We have had inter-sectoral brain drain, where lecturers leave for the industry.
But they go to the private universities and still retain their jobs in the federal universities?
You have the right to go on sabbatical and leave of absence. Over the years, some of these people have accumulated leave, some for five, six years. So they about two years off and go and teach. Except you are close to that individual, you won't know what he is doing.
What is the minimum number of academic staff that a private university is expected to have to run?
What determines that is staff/student ratio. If you have two programmes and in that programme there are about 10 courses, you estimate. You can have a university with only two programmes running, if there are 24 staff there, they will make it. So you don't determine the minimum number of staff. You can also ask, if I'm running a programme in Chemistry what minimum number of courses should be offered to upgrade that course in one year. What any new private university needs in the first year are General Studies and the Basic Sciences, so they may rely on some Master's and PhD holders on sabbatical to beef up their staff strength. In the first year you build up with people that are immediately available because we are running different semesters because of the disconnection in the system. These universities will grow otherwise I won't be in the NUC. I have a passion for private universities because they are going to be the solution to our problems. It is true if you don't pay for good education you will not get it. It does not preclude a good student going to a public university. We also offer scholarships in private universities. When I was in Ota (The Bells University) we gave the best student a scholarship.
How will you react to the allegation by some Vice Chancellors that NUC plays politics with accreditation?
Nobody has said that. Listen my dear, you are the press. You have a duty to ensuring that the system works. Be on the side of truth. A Vice Chancellor has right to write to us after any accreditation. We have been reading the papers saying they were number one in this and number two in that. I have had two cases. When you say Vice Chancellors, there are 93 universities. When we go (for accreditation) we have what we call the technical report and they explain to you why you did not make it. Some universities have HND holders teaching. We have set standards about what the class rooms should look like, what the black board should look like, how many students should be in a class and in Computer Laboratory, how many students per computer.
There are three professors from different environment (assigned to each university) and each one is marking individually. Are you saying Professors have no integrity to sit down and decide that they must fail a university? Or do we call them and tell them that you must go and fail that institution. Nobody does that. I am in charge of this situation. (One university) went to the Minister and said they could not make it. I told the Honourable Minister that I am a regulatory agency, this man, if there is a problem he should come to the NUC, so we can show him the documents. If anybody has anything now, we have what they call the ground of appeal. You appeal. Those who come first publish in the papers that they are number one. Why don't they say that they bribe us to get that position? We have a problem with the system and that is integrity. I stand to be challenged. How can three professors connive to fail universities with an NUC scribe leading them? Help us to do this job.
What have you gained from the conference?
We have a problem about access in Nigeria. But I have discovered that is not just access, but quality access, not to just higher education, but to issues of HIV, farming system, livelihood and even weather. We are talking about continuous education, basic and post basic, vocational and technical education. About 80 percent of our students who desire university education does not have placement. We should have a flexible system, so that if you go in one direction, when you are competent enough, you can go the other way. Open and Distance Learning (ODL) will enhance that because if you have certification for some of these programmes that they do. It will help us a long way. What I have learnt from here is that we keep emphasising National Open University, ODL should actually face other areas such as HIV campaigns, basic and post basic campaign and technical and vocational campaign education, and general information for those who just want to learn. We will soon be talking about the areas of post graduate training. It is going to be a very powerful tool.
Another thing I have also learned is that from the World Trade Organisation concept's general agreement on trade and services, they see Africa as a very viable market for offshore provision of ODL. But I think we have to be very careful. We can share facilities and resources that can enhance our own ODL in house. But for them to now say they want to offer those programmes to our candidates in Nigeria, except we have control over what the quality is and who is offering what, we are going to have a problem. The issues of security and national need are very relevant. We need to also work with development partners to tell them our fears. Recently I was with the British Council to tell them that any university in Britain that wants to offer any service in Nigeria must go through the British council. So we were able to talk at that level of regulatory agencies on what they should be doing.
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