The broadening of the institutional and administrative autonomy of tertiary institutions to allow for more robust objectives in their unique contexts. For instance, universities can be reprofiled in accordance with specific competences. Universities of education are different from agricultural universities or technical universities.
It is in line with this reprofiling imperative that I have made the call for scrapping the Higher National Diploma which can then be replaced with a Bachelor of Technology degree. This constitutes a pragmatic means of ending the protracted conflict polytechnics and universities in terms of skills pricing within the Nigerian society. More fundamentally, however, this recommendation enables the articulation of an expanded curricular and pedagogical content that focuses on an AI-inflected technical education whose objective is to rejig the employability capacity of Nigerian graduates, and rectify the deficit in the human capital development framework.
The education financing model also demands a deep rethinking that speaks to a public-private partnership in terms of how the university partners with critical stakeholders, especially industries and private enterprises in the pursuit of a functional research and development (R&D) protocol that keeps the university, and higher education, on its toes in terms of keeping sustainably abreast of the evolution of the 4IR. Public-private partnership is the key to preserving the sustainability of the education sector and its objective of an AI curriculum that the Nigerian state can harness in terms of the challenges of becoming a developmental state that is firmly inserted into the 4IR.
Finally, universities of education, like the EAUED, have a singular role to play in partnering with the federal government and other relevant stakeholders—Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria, Nigeria Union of Teachers, etc.—to ground pathways to quality teacher education and certification in terms of qualitative professionalism. A gatekeeping model that can strengthen an elongated internship cum teaching practices patterned along the houseman-ship programme in medical training.
The other critical side of that partnership is the town-and-gown initiative that display the EAUED campus as a hub of critical relationship with industries in terms of scientific fairs, tech hubs and technological innovations that impact teaching and learning.
The change management strategy canvassed above hinge on two fundamental recommendations that situate the university and other tertiary institutions within the critical context of sustaining the reforms of the education sector and situating higher education within the context of human capital development of a developmental Nigerian state.
The first recommendation concerns the need to delimit the significance of governance councils in the universities as the first strategic space for (a) transitioning universities away from traditional model to more contemporary entities with modern and standard operating system of management that facilitate AI-inflected curriculum and research; and (b) calibrating a curriculum and research framework that instigate policy direction for the government.
Let me illustrate with a historical example. In 1967, the University of Ibadan was searching for the next vice chancellor after the exit of Prof. Kenneth Dike. The search threw up three eminently qualified candidates—Prof. Davidson Nicol, Sierra Leonian and former professor of medicine at Ibadan; Chief Simeon Adebo, former head of the civil service of the old western region, who had just completed his tenure as Nigeria’s permanent representative to the UN; and Prof. T. A. Lambo, Nigeria’s renowned psychiatrist. Prof. Nicol and Chief Adebo could not take up the job of VC at UI because they had to take up more strategic national responsibilities: Adebo was seconded to the UN to kickstart the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and Nicol became the Sierra Leonean ambassador to the United States. Adeoye Lambo then became the vice chancellor.
This narrative is to reiterate the crucial point that Nigeria at a point—the golden era of the university system and of the public service—was also involved in the global practice of prospecting for individuals with proven managerial competence and skills (rather than just academics) to navigate the universities through the challenging time and dynamics of university governance.
This becomes imperative within the dynamics of higher education management, just so that the leadership and governance framework can be properly and strategically positioned to confront the challenges of the multiple demands and imperatives of higher education in terms of fundraising, strategic planning, expanding institutional partnerships, deepening of public-private and university-industry partnership for more sustainable funding to enable significant administrative and financial autonomy, and overall, institutional development especially in the craving for quality, relevance, internationalisation, and global ranking.
Universities in postcolonial Nigeria are therefore currently faced with the urgency of transcending the generalist orientation and politicisation of the composition of their governing councils and the dire consequences of recycling managerial ignorance which has limited the growth of tertiary institutions and their capacity to backstop policy and developmental progress in Nigeria.
Nigerian universities need proactive governing councils and leaders in the mold of Prof. Mazliham MohdSu’ud of the Multimedia University, Malysia, that will stretch the capacity of the university for building systems, operational efficiency, resource allocation and utilisation, process improvement, adapting new technologies, pedagogical approaches, and responding to societal demands, without losing academic focus, neglecting of core academic mission and values, and hindering academic freedom and research-rooted creativity. This is the only way the universities will stay ahead of the global push for an AI-inflected curricula and pedagogical practices that impact human capital development.
It is such a proactive and dynamic governing council and leadership that will be able to mediate the circumscribed concurrent significance of tertiary education in terms of the relationship of the university, polytechnic and monotechnic to national development. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s institutional dysfunction has already undermined this complementary relationship in favor of the ascendancy of the university, as if the university has the capacity to generate Nigeria’s manpower requirement for productivity turnaround.
What is then needed is forward-thinking policy initiative that rethink the curricula design and innovation that focuses, for instance, on a dual-mode tertiary framework that could blend theoretical learning with practical application. Programmatically, this will ensure that the B.Ed degree will not eventually supplant the NCE certificate issued by the Colleges of Education. Rather, the CoE will be transformed into a dual-mode institutions with a built-in two-step NCE-B.Ed awards.
Finally, tertiary institutions cannot but face the critical significance and impact of industrial relations that pit management with employees and their labour unions. This is not too far-fetched as the continuing impacts of union activities—from ASUU, NASU, SSANU, and others—are felt on the optimal functioning of the universities and other tertiary institutions.
My argument has remained consistent: there is an urgent imperative of transitioning away from an adversarial and militant unionism to a more developmental and technical-rational industrial relations.
This will demand, in conformity with the institutional imperative of Nigeria’s federalism, first that we rethink the urgency of university autonomy, and the significance of a decentralised framework of industrial relations that ensure, for example, that labour unions are allowed to operate within the context of their university and its management.
This will allow the university management and its labour unions to come to some mutual agreement on the best ways forward to facilitate the innovative working out of the university vision and mission, especially in terms of relocating the university into the 4IR through curricula and innovative strategies that situate artificial intelligence and its multiple benefits.
And there is no doubt that universities of education will play a very significant role in this rethinking of the need for the reform of the education sector and the place of higher education in that reform. Universities of education are core not only to the training of teachers, but singularly to the articulation of the curricular and policy innovation that will generate a philosophy of education Nigeria needs to reinsert itself into a developmental mode.
Without incorporating the universities of education into that policy discourse, Nigeria’s human capital development initiative and its capacity to reap the benefits of the 4IR is already jeopardised.
Credit:Guardian