The decision by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) last Wednesday to approve 20 private universities must have baffled many people. It was a decision that flew in the face of the challenges that confront existing private and public universities. How did the FEC arrive at the decision? What benchmarks were used to assess applications for establishment of new universities? What sound arguments preceded the decision? What objectives are the universities expected to serve?
Policymakers in government do not hear and do not learn from recent history. A deputy director at the National Universities Commission (NUC), Ashafa Ladan, revealed at a public lecture in Ilorin, Kwara State, on Wednesday, January 7, 2015, that fewer than 50 per cent of university lecturers in Nigeria have the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. Ladan said lack of qualified academic staff in universities had adversely affected accreditation of many of the degree, diploma, and certificate programmes offered by the universities.
Ladan said: “Most of the teaching staff in private universities are either employed on sabbatical, visiting or adjunct basis due essentially to difficulty in attracting quality staff at this level…The quality of teaching staff (senior lecturers and above) poses a greater challenge with regard to mentoring, research and research leadership, effective linkages, journal publication and the general evaluation system of standing of the university.”
Against this background, it is, therefore, surprising that the rise in the number of private universities in Nigeria is taking place in an unregulated environment in which licences are allocated randomly to the highest bidders. This has exposed the country’s existing clumsy policy on university education.
Approval of 20 private universities last week against the backdrop of poor quality of university education in Nigeria is an example of a mindless decision made on the run. That resolution, unfortunately, did not consider the critical issues in private universities identified by Ladan six years ago. The FEC did not weigh the existing environment in which the universities are expected to operate.
The new universities will not enhance the quality of higher education or equip students with essential knowledge that will enable them to operate and excel in a challenging 21st century work environment. Surely, the FEC has short-changed future university students, including the standard of education they would receive.
Higher education must have value. It must promote quality teaching and learning, innovative research, personal and professional development, and service to community. A university without quality is worthless. Universities must not be set up like commercial ventures.
Haphazard establishment of universities is a growing but dangerous trend. It raises questions about policy, or lack of policy, on university education. Specific criteria must be outlined to guide the establishment of universities. Businessmen and women pushing the sporadic growth of private universities must understand that more of the universities will not guarantee quality education. Private universities should not be encouraged to sprout all over the place or given the nod to commence business without proper scrutiny.
There are strong grounds on which the Federal Government should reject applications for establishment of private universities. The number one reason is that existing public and private universities have failed to deliver quality education to students. Adding new private universities to the hotchpotch of ill-equipped and underfunded higher education institutions in Nigeria will degrade, rather than enhance, the standard of university education. The sloppy approval of private universities has exposed the government’s inability to stop arbitrary setting up of higher education institutions. The impact of this policy failure will be felt a few years from now.
When would the government end epidemic approval of new private universities? In the first quarter of 2015, the Federal Government approved nine private universities. On November 2, 2016, eight more private universities were endorsed. Following a decision in November 2010 by the government to endorse six new federal universities, the then Education Minister, Ruqayyatu Rufa’I, said the decision was intended to reduce the increasing pressure on limited undergraduate places in universities. She said, offhandedly, that more than 84 per cent of qualified students could not be admitted because the universities had exceeded their capacities.
When you tally the number of public and private universities set up in the past 10 years, including the latest approvals, you will see the government has endorsed no fewer than 43 universities. That is a lot by anyone’s estimation. This suggests the government is now in the business of commercialising university education that serves the best interests of private businessmen and women. The future of university education is not only threatened in Nigeria, it is well and truly on the way to extinction.
Reasons offered for the indiscriminate approval of new universities are perplexing. In 2016, the government said additional universities would afford more opportunities to the multitude of students seeking admission into existing universities. That was a hare-brained argument, which I will unpack shortly. Establishing new private universities as a response to the booming number of students seeking admission into universities is not rational thinking. It is also not ground-breaking or innovative. It is backward thinking driven by lack of ideas.
Among current and previous federal education ministers, there is an assumption that the higher the number of universities in Nigeria, the fewer the number of students looking for admission into universities. The reasoning is mind-blowing. Increasing the number of private universities is only a temporary solution to a long-term problem of too many students contesting fewer admission places in universities.
Pushing thousands of students into brand new universities that are ill-equipped and poorly funded without proper planning for quality teaching and research or for jobs that would serve the needs of students when they graduate is a recipe for disaster. It is ill-advised, impulsive, irresponsible policy has the potential to lead to extreme frustration for students.
The Federal Government must keep in mind that it is not enough to proliferate the number of private and public universities. A major consideration must be the ability of new universities to find and hire qualified teaching and administrative staff. If new private universities cannot recruit qualified teaching staff, if they have no research, technical, and administrative staff, the universities would be unable to provide to students and their parents the kind of educational services they promised.
Another issue the government must consider before approving new universities is that accreditation of degree programmes is often based on a number of criteria such as the number of qualified academic and research staff, availability of basic facilities that support teaching and research such as well-equipped science laboratories, libraries that are equipped with relevant and current texts, journals, periodicals, databases, as well as video and audio-visual facilities. University programmes that cannot meet these targets will not be accredited.
While existing public universities have continued to struggle with limited infrastructure, limited funding, restricted office space, a dearth of qualified academic staff, poorly equipped libraries, and inadequately equipped science laboratories, all of which continue to impact negatively on the quality of the graduates, newly established private universities should not expect to overcome these challenges in the current climate of financial and economic difficulties.