At a recent meeting of the TETFUND book development committee in Abuja, its chairman, Professor Charles Aworh frowned at the quality of thesis written by postgrad uate students in Nigeria’s universities. AUGUSTINE OKEZIE takes a critical look at the available remedial steps
While lamenting on the poor quality of some PhD theses produced by doctoral students, Chairman, Book Publication Sub-committee of the TETFund, Professor Charles Aworh, urged government to overhaul the postgraduate programmes being run by the nation’s universities in order to strengthen the quality of the system.
Professor Charles Aworh also called on the Federal Government to urgently revisit the criteria for training and awarding postgraduate degrees in the universities.
Speaking at Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) National Book Development Fund (BDF) intervention meeting in Abuja, Aworh said the nation’s tertiary education sector had degenerated to a point that most postgraduate students could not write good theses.
He added that the committee, in carrying out its mandate, was miffed by horribly written doctoral theses that had been accepted by the university authorities and degrees awarded to such scholars.
He said: “We want the NUC to ensure that postgraduate training is strengthened; that the process of examination of PhD theses is corrected because that is where the problems lie.”
Professor Aworh said that “it is unfortunate to see a thesis that has been accepted by the university and years after you set up a panel to look at it and you are finding faults in the thesis. This is a big problem. The NUC has to intervene in that aspect.
“Unfortunately, there are many poorly written theses. We looked at over 200 written theses of which we selected about 50 that we thought would meet the criteria for conversion into books, but by the time we sent these theses to Nigerian professors, they came with a damning reports on most of the theses and of the 50, only 11 were found worth converting into books.
“That tells the sorry situation in which our universities are. If we are producing Ph.D theses and professors will look at them and find faults on degrees that have been awarded, we are really in trouble in the country. We need to revisit the issue of postgraduate training in our universities; that is another outcome from this exercise.”
He said the book publication initiative was set up by the TETFund to address the problem of paucity of books in Nigerian tertiary education system.
He noted that the nation’s universities did not have sufficient books for students, for staff and for research, adding that the quality of books available was not what they should be, and this led to the decision by the TETFund to intervene by encouraging the publication of books that are written by seasoned Nigerian professionals for tertiary institutions.
The Dangers ahead
The observation made by the book development on the paucity of quality thesis should be regarded as a timely warning requiring urgent intervention by those concerned.
The situation is manifestly made more precarious by the fact presently most universities are scarcely stocked with requisite reading materials due to low production of quality books, which was occasioned by lacked of quality thesis that could be turned into a book.
The argument is simple: if there are no quality theses which serve as the basic raw material for producing textbooks for the students, then there will be no availability of reading material for students.
Remediation
Addressing the poor quality of postgraduate theses requires aggressive training, to strengthen the quality of writings and ensure that the process of examination of PhD theses is corrected. Organised training will definitely provide the students the needed orientation and set models on how to write quality thesis.
The university authorities should also review their method of scrutinising submitted thesis proposals, to ensure that all submissions were adequately screened before getting any pass mark. A situation were propositions are hurriedly passed without the requisite supervisions, does not speak well for such universities
TETFUND, NUC intervention
Not a few stakeholders have described the intervention of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) and the National Universities Commission (NUC), as most invaluable and timely, as the drive towards improving the quality of academic programmes in Nigeria’ Universities is capital intensive and cannot be handled by the students and the universities alone. While TETFUND is expected to handle the funding aspect, the NUC as the regulatory authority is expected to police standards and ensure compliance with led down regulations.
The era in which any written material is easily passed as theses without questioning and subject to suspicion, should be history by now, especially in this dynamic age.
The book development committee should go beyond rhetorics by ensuring that the right academic culture reigned supreme in the universities especially at the postgraduate level. Realizing the needed synergy between NUC and TETFUND, should be the primary concern of the committee.
