Over one million candidates scored 180 and above in the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and are qualified to gain admission, but Julius Okojie, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), said only about 400,000 candidates will be admitted into the university system. He said the facilities on ground cannot accommodate all. He said his new administration will focus on improving access to education and is aiming at increasing the number of students that will be admitted into universities to 800,000 within the next five years. Excerpts:
Stabilising the university system
For us at the National Universities Commission, we have made progress through the reforms we have had. We have more divisions and departments that address issues we are having in the universities. For the first time, we are addressing the issues of entrepreneurship, leadership and counselling and presently, we have talked about improvement in programmes. We are talking about gerontology, mechatronics; new programmes we think that will really push the system forward to address the issues that are our national needs.
To a large extent, we have improved the quality of programming because there are more programmes now with full accreditation.
More than ever before, we have effective monitoring of the university system. Through our prompting, government now has adopted a platform for appointment of principal officers in universities. We have a better deal in terms of the remuneration of teachers today than ever before and because of the in-depth analysis of what the problems were, we have a backlog of history and documents that we can always fall back to address the issues that are germane in the system. More importantly, we have a very strong hold on the university system, whether it is under-graduate or post-graduate. Benchmark minimum academic standard has been provided. Even for post-graduate, we didn’t have benchmark before; we now have started accreditation for MBA.
Now we have expanded access through the recommendation for the approval of private universities. During this period under review, we have almost 30 or 40 new universities. I must say that we now have relative level of stability because we are now addressing the issue of remuneration. The rapport between the commission and the universities out there is not interaction in terms of monitoring. What you see is not all that is going on because we have a lot to do within the system here than just inviting universities and getting their issues resolved.
Increase in funding
There is also more funding through the Education Trust Fund (ETF). Recently, the ETF launched the guidelines for accessing the N3 billion research grant. There is the STEP-B 180 million dollars. So all these are coming within the system. There is also more money in terms of staff development and capacity building. So we have become more effective than ever before. I think that in respect to quality of teachers, we have greater teacher quality today because ETF has in the past three provided a lot of fund for teacher development and retention.
Recently, we created new department to address the issues that are very crucial in the system.
Improving access to education
Now, our target is to ensure that the university system have more programmes that are relevant to national need and that are relevant to addressing global issues. Our target is to ensure that we tag on to the ministry’s objective and the turnaround strategies of making education a priority. Of course we should be talking about more students entering the system. Within the next five years, we should be talking about hitting, 800,000 students in the university system through the normal and natural means. If we improve the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and the National Open University, we can achieve this. For us to improve access, open and distance learning have become a very critical aspect of our responsibility. Very soon we are going to have interaction with the British Council on ODL. If you look at the ODL in India, it is able to address the issue of access for over 1.8 million. Here we have 1.5 million applicants, but we are not able to take 400,000 students. That is an issue. We are not talking about failure in JAMB. The policy meeting says whoever scores 180 and above can enter the university system. About one million scored 180 and above, but there is no space for them. There are people who are 27 years old still struggling to enter the university; they can go do the ODL, work and go to school. We have provided the guideline for ensuring these things are in place.
Creating minimum academic standards
In the next 100 days, we plan that the curriculum that have been under review will be completed and all programmes that do not have benchmark minimum academic standard will have, because we have to drive that system effectively. Then we must be able to digitalise all the physical masterplan of the university system, so that we can sit down here and monitor what they do.
Then some of the nine new universities are likely to take off in the next 100 days and my belief is that a quarter or more of them would have taken off effectively. We also think that we would have gone through the process of routine responsibility of honouring our distinguished professors. We have a programme we call distinguished professors award. It will take place.
We are going to key into the full programmes of the ministry of education. But more important is that we would set a platform on which we are going to launch the success of education story in the next five years. In the next 100 days we would know what direction we are going and what it takes to achieve it. We will identify the turnaround strategy because from the education roadmap, we are going to pull out what is responsible for the progress we are going to make.
We will have something on the menu. The next 100 days will determine what the next five years will look like.
Staff and student audit
We are also sending out signals that any university that is 15 years and above if it has not made arrangements to move to the permanent site will stand the risk of closing shop because enabling environment for learning and physical facilities are very important. You cannot lock yourself in a two hectare shop and think you will make progress. This is what we are going to do to ensure effective monitoring. We do not keep adequate data. In the next 100 days we want to start staff and students audit. We do not know how many students that are genuinely in the system. Lecturers teach in two or three places and we now have information that some people keep two permanent jobs which is scandalous in the system. We should be able to have some good enough data to take off. If we do that, we will know who is teaching where and where there is deficiency. We cannot be sure we are meeting the demands. Government has to be ready and give it the wings we require by ensuring enough funds for staff development. China and India did it. You cannot pay lip service to staff development.
Instituitional accreditation
We have advertised for accreditors and are harvesting all their CVs. There is a budget for it, which has gone through a process. In the next one or two months, we would have completed the exercise. That is going to happen and there is no doubt about that. The board has approved that we go ahead.
Stabilising the university system
For us at the National Universities Commission, we have made progress through the reforms we have had. We have more divisions and departments that address issues we are having in the universities. For the first time, we are addressing the issues of entrepreneurship, leadership and counselling and presently, we have talked about improvement in programmes. We are talking about gerontology, mechatronics; new programmes we think that will really push the system forward to address the issues that are our national needs.
To a large extent, we have improved the quality of programming because there are more programmes now with full accreditation.
More than ever before, we have effective monitoring of the university system. Through our prompting, government now has adopted a platform for appointment of principal officers in universities. We have a better deal in terms of the remuneration of teachers today than ever before and because of the in-depth analysis of what the problems were, we have a backlog of history and documents that we can always fall back to address the issues that are germane in the system. More importantly, we have a very strong hold on the university system, whether it is under-graduate or post-graduate. Benchmark minimum academic standard has been provided. Even for post-graduate, we didn’t have benchmark before; we now have started accreditation for MBA.
Now we have expanded access through the recommendation for the approval of private universities. During this period under review, we have almost 30 or 40 new universities. I must say that we now have relative level of stability because we are now addressing the issue of remuneration. The rapport between the commission and the universities out there is not interaction in terms of monitoring. What you see is not all that is going on because we have a lot to do within the system here than just inviting universities and getting their issues resolved.
Increase in funding
There is also more funding through the Education Trust Fund (ETF). Recently, the ETF launched the guidelines for accessing the N3 billion research grant. There is the STEP-B 180 million dollars. So all these are coming within the system. There is also more money in terms of staff development and capacity building. So we have become more effective than ever before. I think that in respect to quality of teachers, we have greater teacher quality today because ETF has in the past three provided a lot of fund for teacher development and retention.
Recently, we created new department to address the issues that are very crucial in the system.
Improving access to education
Now, our target is to ensure that the university system have more programmes that are relevant to national need and that are relevant to addressing global issues. Our target is to ensure that we tag on to the ministry’s objective and the turnaround strategies of making education a priority. Of course we should be talking about more students entering the system. Within the next five years, we should be talking about hitting, 800,000 students in the university system through the normal and natural means. If we improve the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and the National Open University, we can achieve this. For us to improve access, open and distance learning have become a very critical aspect of our responsibility. Very soon we are going to have interaction with the British Council on ODL. If you look at the ODL in India, it is able to address the issue of access for over 1.8 million. Here we have 1.5 million applicants, but we are not able to take 400,000 students. That is an issue. We are not talking about failure in JAMB. The policy meeting says whoever scores 180 and above can enter the university system. About one million scored 180 and above, but there is no space for them. There are people who are 27 years old still struggling to enter the university; they can go do the ODL, work and go to school. We have provided the guideline for ensuring these things are in place.
Creating minimum academic standards
In the next 100 days, we plan that the curriculum that have been under review will be completed and all programmes that do not have benchmark minimum academic standard will have, because we have to drive that system effectively. Then we must be able to digitalise all the physical masterplan of the university system, so that we can sit down here and monitor what they do.
Then some of the nine new universities are likely to take off in the next 100 days and my belief is that a quarter or more of them would have taken off effectively. We also think that we would have gone through the process of routine responsibility of honouring our distinguished professors. We have a programme we call distinguished professors award. It will take place.
We are going to key into the full programmes of the ministry of education. But more important is that we would set a platform on which we are going to launch the success of education story in the next five years. In the next 100 days we would know what direction we are going and what it takes to achieve it. We will identify the turnaround strategy because from the education roadmap, we are going to pull out what is responsible for the progress we are going to make.
We will have something on the menu. The next 100 days will determine what the next five years will look like.
Staff and student audit
We are also sending out signals that any university that is 15 years and above if it has not made arrangements to move to the permanent site will stand the risk of closing shop because enabling environment for learning and physical facilities are very important. You cannot lock yourself in a two hectare shop and think you will make progress. This is what we are going to do to ensure effective monitoring. We do not keep adequate data. In the next 100 days we want to start staff and students audit. We do not know how many students that are genuinely in the system. Lecturers teach in two or three places and we now have information that some people keep two permanent jobs which is scandalous in the system. We should be able to have some good enough data to take off. If we do that, we will know who is teaching where and where there is deficiency. We cannot be sure we are meeting the demands. Government has to be ready and give it the wings we require by ensuring enough funds for staff development. China and India did it. You cannot pay lip service to staff development.
Instituitional accreditation
We have advertised for accreditors and are harvesting all their CVs. There is a budget for it, which has gone through a process. In the next one or two months, we would have completed the exercise. That is going to happen and there is no doubt about that. The board has approved that we go ahead.
0 comments:
Post a Comment