Critics of the nation’s tertiary education have talked extensively on the quality of products from the Nigerian universities. In this article, PROF. IBRAHIM A. KOLO takes a look at salient areas of reforms that can rejuvenate the system
The pronouncement by Senate committee chairperson on Tertiary Education and TETFund), Senator Binta Garba Masi that a review of legislations governing the tertiary education sector was in the offing, came as most welcome initiative required for fundamental changes which have long been overdue for sustainable and impact-oriented outcomes from the country’s tertiary education institutions.
According to reports, Senator Binta, said the reviews will focus on strengthening legislations and regulations which have worked and revising those which have not worked from past experiences. If the exercise comes through by concentrating on redressing the contemporary fundamental challenges besieging the tertiary education sector in the country, it will be the most revolutionary step since independence in 1960 towards reforming higher education and institutions of learning.
To date, the most seemingly daunting challenges which have stagnated and even drawn back the Nigerian tertiary education system, and indeed the education sector, include gross underfunding, hoard of dilapidated infrastructure and outdated teaching and learning facilities, truncated and depreciated quality and dysfunctionality of the system outputs, limitations in access to higher institutions and above all, the dilution of teacher education and teacher professionalism.
Most unfortunately, as these challenges worsened by the years, much of the measures to address them were, at the best, either as palliatives which were not sustainable or worst still, in the context of unworkable approaches which only ended begging the issues. Two examples illustrate the point vividly. The National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), were established, one after the other, to regulate quality and facilitate functionality of university, polytechnic and teacher education standards, respectively.
As we do know today, after several years of grappling with the enthronement of setting Benchmark Academic Minimum Standards (BMASS) and accreditation exercises in tertiary education, the quality and functionality of outputs from the tertiary institutions have only been on a nose-dive. Also, while the Advanced Teachers Colleges (now Colleges of Education) were introduced into the tertiary education system to uplift and enhance teacher education and professionalism over the Grade II Teachers Training as a means of facilitating the drive towards making the first degree (but beginning with the Nigeria Certificate in Education – NCE) the minimum qualification for teaching in the primary schools (now Basic Education), the reality today is that the products of these institutions are far short of expectations of core qualities of professional teachers.
The 2007 report of the UNESCO/Federal Ministry of Education (FME) on Diagnoses of the Nigerian Education Sector documents the appalling levels of depreciation of standards and quality of graduates of our tertiary institutions.
And, although policy efforts have been made by successive governments to redress the situation, the results have mostly been like moving in a vicious cycle of cosmetic solutions rather than progressive efforts at addressing the fundamental challenges.
As the revered Emeritus Professor Pai Obanya had described the scenario, we were more in love with creating structures (NUC, NBTE, NCCE, National Teachers Institute –NTI, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria TRCN, etc.), rather than exploring and institutionalising workable systems of strengthening policy inputs, outputs and outcomes expected in the reforms we sought to utilise to address the challenges.
It is indeed from this perspective that the initiative by the Senate Committee should be taken as a critical input required for addressing the challenges for a sustainable and impact-oriented tertiary education delivery in Nigeria.
To take the topmost place in the proposed Legislative Review Agenda for the Nigerian Tertiary Education System should be the enactment of relevant Bills for safeguarding commensurate and sustainable funding of the entire Education Sector at all levels. The whole-sector funding bill is essential for ensuring that the tertiary education system will subsequently be fed with quality products. Perhaps then, the Senator Binta’s committee needs to take along its’ corresponding Committee on Education to ensure synergy and quicker passage of the amendments to the Bills or the possible new ones to emerge.
Four key issues are essential for safeguarding commensurate and sustainable funding of tertiary education in particular.
These are engendering a minimum percentage of budgetary provision for the tertiary level of education, making tertiary education exclusive to federal government or collectives of states with provisions for enhancing resources and funding outside government coffers, establishment of an Education Bank and Insurance Outfit to address amongst others, loan schemes for students and teachers, facilitating welfare needs of workers in the education sector and sourcing and meeting up with budget deficits affecting the Sector and finally, reinventing the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for sustainable and impact-oriented delivery in the system.
While the aspect of engendering a commensurate minimum budgetary allocation borders on entrenching the UNESCO recommended 26% of national budgets for the education sector as a measure for guaranteeing education for sustainable societal development, the case of making tertiary education exclusive to the federal government and (or) collective of states borders on eliminating unwarranted proliferation and duplication of efforts in public tertiary education delivery, particularly by state governments that have delved almost uncontrollably into establishing tertiary institutions they are unable to maintain.
On its part, the need for legislation for an Education Bank is predicated on sourcing for and safeguarding extra resources and funds to be channeled to the tertiary education system development. In respect of reinventing TETFund it has become critical for legislative review owing to recent threats to its sustainability and the vulnerability of the present Act of the Fund to politically motivated and sentimental manipulations. Elsewhere, I have suggested specific strategies for reinventing TETFund accordingly.
It is obvious that the emphasis on prescribing Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMASS) and routine Academic Programmes Accreditation by the three key Regulatory Bodies (NUC, NBTE and NCCE) of Nigeria’s tertiary education system have certainly not engendered functionality and quality in graduate outputs from tertiary institutions.
And although the Mandates of the three regulatory bodies would seem to most people to be different, they are all fundamentally expected to perform the same function – Tertiary Education Quality Assurance. Practically speaking, the three bodies all approach Quality Assurance from the same perspective of prescriptive BMASS and Academic Programmes Accreditation. For all intents and purposes of enthroning Quality Assurance in the Tertiary Education System, there is a need to collapse the three bodies into one “Nigerian National Tertiary Education Quality Assurance Board” (NNTEQAB) with separate Directorates to facilitate Quality Assurance in the three categories of institutions more from the perspective of Stakeholders-Based Involvement and Peer Review Mechanisms with powers for determining Institutional and Programmes Standard and Quality Status.
The approach will not only streamline the number of regulatory bodies with more or less duplicated functions in the tertiary education system (as prescribed in the now abandoned Steve Oronsanye Report), but it will also facilitate synergy between the tertiary institutions and relevant stakeholders towards enthroning academic and professional quality in the system. The legislative review needed to address depreciating standards of tertiary education, therefore, is to repel the extant Acts establishing multiple regulatory bodies and to replace them with one Act providing for a Tertiary Education Quality Assurance Mechanism and System whose Mandate shall focus more on enthroning and safeguarding academic development and professional quality, rather than the arrogation of sole authorities for programmes accreditation to separate regulatory agencies.
Based on Institutional Quality Assurance measures, the proposed single body will also subsume the role of facilitating curricular reinvention for Tertiary Education, a role the Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) has been having challenges in delving into. Another legislative measure that could enhance quality in tertiary education may have to do with reviewing the provisions of the Act establishing the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) by way of strengthening it to work with the institutions and professional bodies to facilitate conducting “Academic and Professional Aptitude Tests” for pre-admissions and pre-career entry stages for candidates and students respectively.
A review in this direction will no doubt lessen frictions and distractive tendencies that have hampered the examination body from fully carrying out its functions without unnecessary criticisms. The measure will also instill confidence by tertiary institutions and professional regulatory bodies in the examination body, while making the Post- UTME exercises by tertiary institutions unnecessary. Certainly, in line with international best practices, scrapping JAMB as many uninformed persons have been canvassing is never the best way forward in terms of quality measures.
