Why tuition fees in federal varsities is inevitable, by Okojie February 13, 2008 | posted by Nigerian Muse (Archives)

 

GUARDIAN

 

Thursday, February 14, 2008              

Why tuition fees in federal varsities is inevitable, by Okojie

Prof. Julius Okojie, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) is difficult to track. A request was first placed on his desk for an interview five months ago. But he made promises, which were difficult to keep because of his very busy schedules. But last weekend, in his office in Abuja, he had to shut his office door for two hours, resisting the temptation to attend to very important personalities to grant this interview.

Never known to shy away from expressing his mind, Okojie was his usual self: blunt, concise, daring. For instance, he told ROTIMI LAWRENCE OYEKANMI that he couldn't understand why the Federal Government continues to shy away from introducing tuition fees in the Federal Universities. He also touched on other sensitive issues, like the ASUU matter, the bad behaviour of some reputable universities and much more. Excerpts:

HOW has the Executive Secretary coped with his tasks?
When you ask how far I have gone, there is nothing that comes easy. When you have work to do, hard work does not kill. I love doing my job. And if you love doing your job it becomes easy, but on the other hand it is easy because you have people to manage within the system. The Nigerian University system is a very large one. You have over 1, 000, 090 students, you have the teaching and non-teaching staff, plus the headquarters staff, about 400, then our interaction with the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) and development partners, so I don't have a structured job description. Yes, the mandate is... orderly development to Universities, with the implications for prescribing minimum academic standard, maintaining carrying capacity, approving requests for private universities, supporting research and monitoring the university system. It is a large task, but with the support of the staff the work doesn't become too difficult.

And yes, I may be new here but the system is not new. The NUC is 46 years and there are some directors that have been here for 20 years, and even some other staff members too. So it is not my strength. It has been a collective job, with the support of the government and the FME.

On Reforms

In terms of the reforms, there are two levels. Reform within the National Universities Commission (NUC) and within the Nigerian University system. Within the NUC, we started by restructuring the departments. We now have two new departments that were not there before: Department of Student Support Services, and the Department of Research and Innovation.

We have also restructured to the extent that some staff members were declared redundant. So, we have a very trim force now. We are talking of effective services. We have also done a lot of training and re-training. A lot of people have travelled on short courses, capacity building.

At the level of the Universities, the first thing we did was to go out for programmes audit. We wanted to know how many programmes are running in the University system. We have 13 disciplines. The essence, among others, was to discover how many programmes were operating illegally. We discovered about 400 out of the total of 2,500 captured were running illegally. But we know there are many more than that.

We also started addressing the issue of part-time programmes, linkages, unapproved affiliations and sandwich programmes. We are trying to streamline them. In some of these cases, we were taken to court. But we still stand our ground. Like LASU (Lagos State University). It is doing some internal reforms but we still tell them that for any programme to be recognised, we have to go for resource verification and also accreditation.

You don't start a campus without our going to see whether the environment is good enough for students. How can 81,000 students spread across six different campuses within Lagos. And I think what the approach should be is, they have the right to start as many Universities as they want to. But we have to go and check, track and accredit them. But the ones they are operating, nobody knows where they are. So, that has been a major challenge.

I have also had the privilege of addressing issues that have arisen from Universities that have falling short of expectations. One of them was the issue of not going through JAMB (Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board) for admission. There are quite a lot of things we are addressing internally without necessarily making noise about them. The issue of Universities starting postgraduate programmes without graduating students in those programmes.

But what has become novelty in our approach is that we go one on one in the universities. When a university errs, we send for the governing board or council, we sit here and resolve issues. The one I was talking of earlier, the issue of a university admitting students without going through JAMB, we had a meeting-JAMB, the University and the NUC. We are addressing the matter. It has to do with religion.

Recently, we have had the challenge of unapproved programmes and unapproved affiliations. So between the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), and us we stopped them from being mobilised for the NYSC and that created a lot of noise. So we now know, we were able to capture those who were involved. The University of Ibadan was involved. The University of Port-Harcourt, Uyo, and Nnsuka were involved. So they now know that from now on, no new entrance into those systems. We are trying to see what we can do about the students that are already there.

We also have programmes in Medical Laboratory Science Technology and they were running this thing in about eight teaching hospitals, with the Chief Medical Directors serving as their leaders. And I said no, teaching hospitals don't award degrees. So, what we did was to invite the Chief Medical Directors of those teaching hospitals and Ekpoma (Ambrose Alli University) was the source of their problem. So, what we have done is, we closed all those outlets and distributed those students to Universities that have approval to run those programmes in the Faculty of Science.

What has been the most challenging aspect of the system is that a lot of campuses have decaying facilities. They issue of uncontrolled development of campuses, we called one Peter Adeniyi to start the geographic information system. We want to capture all the master plans of the universities, digitalise them, which makes for ease of planning. So before now, they (universities) just put bricks every where. We also have a survey now of which University does not have an up-to-date master plan. How can you start a university if you don't have a master plan? universities are guilty of this - private, state or federal, all of them. So, if you don't have a good master plan, you can't plan effectively.

We have reviewed the Benchmark Minimal Academic Standard. At the point at which I came in, it was to go for distribution after approval. But we discovered there were errors. So for those programmes that were not properly done, we reviewed them. They are now ready for onward transmission to the Federal Executive Council through the Minister of Education.

Now the issue of adequate teaching facilities we have addressed, by pressurising and making good presentations during the budget period for Equipment Research Grant. We also have Direct Teaching and Laboratory Cost - those two facilities are there now, which mean that we have a lot of money going for disposables and buying of the equipment in the system for research to be up and going.

If you consider the structure of student population; 1,090,000 students only about nine per cent of that is doing research and postgraduate. It's very poor. So we also want to encourage research and development.

We also had interactions with the development partners. MacArthur gave us some money for bandwidth and ICT convergence in the university system. We are part of the step B project of the FME, it's a $180 million project and I serve on the management board, and at some point we have also applied for money for projects within the system. Once that comes on board, the facility is almost matured and we would be able to benefit from it. Don't forget that in the past year, we have been driving the ICT common platform in the University system, to the extent that in the last regime, before May 2007, the Federal Government gave approval for Afribank and Zinox to go to universities and establish computer parks, on the Public Private Partnership basis. They are obtaining a loan from Union Bank, they put this parks in place, build structures and furnish it with Zinox computers and take some token fees from students over a period of time. It is like the Build Operate and Transfer. Over a period of time they would have recovered their cost. So the university is not going to spend money.

There is also what we call the Computer Ownership Scheme. They would help staff and students obtain laptops, The staff would pay from their salaries, and from students they would also be able to collect. If you know how to drive and you don't have a car, you'll probably be a bad driver at some point in time. So, for those who are computer literate, it is good they have something to work with regularly.

We have also held a lot of seminars and workshops, some on improvement on the development of project proposals. We have been in touch with the British Council and we are going to bring some resource persons in very soon on how to perfect all these things. So we have generally been very busy and interacting with universities.

We have met with professional bodies with respect to ensuring that we have common accreditation teams. We have met with ICAN (Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria), The Law School, The Nigerian Institute of Engineers to ensure uniformity.

People are expressing a lot of worries about academic standard in the private universities. People want to know where they are going to get good, tested lecturers from, especially in view of the recent NUC rule that if you don't have a PhD degree, you can't teach in the university.

Let me solve the first problem for you, the issue of, if you don't have a PhD you cannot teach. It has been an old regulation in university system. If you graduate with a Second Class Upper or a First Class, we take you as a Graduate Assistant. You are a Trainee Fellow. You are not a lecturer. When you earn your Master's, you become an assistant lecturer, you are still not a lecturer. A lecturer is an examiner. The day you obtain your PhD, even if you have never worked before, your first appointment is lecturer Grade Two. But for those who come in as a Trainee Fellow, they must go through that process to become lecturers. The day they get their PhD, they become lecturers.

So there are guidelines. If you are have a First Class or Second Class Upper, they give you two years to get your Masters. They give you another three years to get your Ph.D. So if you add the number of years, you find out that it is the same period of time if you are coming in as a lecturer 2 with a mature Masters.

What has happened in the past is that because of dearth of PhDs, they take those with mature Masters as lecturer Grade 2. They cannot be examiners! An examiner is a lecturer, you can set questions and grade. What has happened in the past is that, that lecturer who does not have a PhD is a graduate student. He cannot attend a Board of Examiners' meetings, because he is either doing his PhD there or somewhere else. They exclude him for a lot of things.

But you see, universities have lost their tradition. Some don't even know what they are doing! As a new university, if you start with somebody who has never had management experience, he is going to appoint somebody without a PhD as lecturer Grade One or Senior lecturer.

When I was Vice-Chancellor, if you did not have a PhD, however long you have stayed in the system, you cannot be a Senior Lecturer. It's an on-going thing. This deadline, I did not set it. First of all it was 2008. If you look at the BMAS, it would tell you Minimum Academic Standard, progression line - you must obtain this to get that. Even when they advertise in the papers, go and look at it. It would tell you, a Lecturer Grade Two must have a Ph.D. We are only re-emphasising it, for new institutions because, you know what they were doing in some universities? Some of them make retired chief accountants professors. So that clause - 'without a PhD you cannot be a lecturer', is to checkmate, because you can not just pick somebody who has been practising law and make him a Professor of Law. If I go to the Police Force today, they would not just make me a Commissioner; I have to start from somewhere.

For private Universities I am not worried. In my time as Chairman, Standing Committee of Private Universities and the Executive Secretary, we have put in place more than 27 private Universities. It is future of this country. You know why? The Federal Government is not going to establish new Universities, except it is necessary. Even the ones that State Governments are putting in place, when you have a change of government, it has happened in a lot of places, they change. Yobe is quarrelling, Plateau is quarrelling with what their former governors had done. Instability is not good for any new University. For private Universities, we are encouraging faith- based institutions, for instance, the Catholics, Anglicans, the Muslim Organisations, because you find that it is a congregation, a community and they have a moral attitude to what they are doing. They ensure that all students are in the hostels.

You don't have lecturers before you start universities. Harvard University started in 1634, with John Druster as the President and only lecturer and four students. What was he teaching? A University is not for the weary mind. It is for those who have the knowledge, critical mass of knowledge who want to study. They lecture you in the university. At times you study on your own to get some knowledge. It is not like the primary school where they write on the blackboard. So you find that we deliberately ensure orderly development of private Universities, by ensuring that they start with only few programmes, where they have lecturers. And as they mature they bring in more.

The issue of funding has always been controversial. The Federal Universities depend, almost entirely on the Federal Government for survival. How is the NUC addressing this issue?

What has happened is that, there is a very poor development. In an attempt to generate funds from some other sources, universities have created programmes that are very weak and irrelevant. Universities were once involved in what we used to call satellite campuses, but the vacancies have now been filled by Part Time programmes, Sandwich programmes, affiliations that are not approved.

Some of these programmes are not properly captured, in the sense that although they obtain the same certificate as those on the main campus, but they are not taught by the same lecturers. So it is a poorer quality, but they score higher grades. So the IGR (Internally Generated Revenue) of the University system is a problem.

What we must do, and what I think we should do is that government alone cannot fund tertiary education. Let government concentrate on the primary and secondary levels of education. If you want university education, you pay for it. You cannot have a tuition-free policy. And we say this, but from one government to another, we are finding it difficult to put it in place because of the fear that students would riot. I would rather they riot and we let them know that this is the true position, than we keep managing for a long time. Managing is not doing well for us.

We have just calculated what it cost to train a student. And the Federal Government is waiting for it. You see, this government is very systematic. They want to know what it costs to train one student, to know what part the parents are paying, what part the university is paying. It is only when you have that picture that government would think about if it is reasonable to introduce tuition. But a lot of universities charge all kinds of fees, because of the vacuum created by the tuition - free policy.

We can use the South African model. If a Vice-Chancellor has 3,000 spaces, he can go to the government and ask, how many people can you sponsor out of the 300 spaces? Government can say, maybe 2,000. Then you advertise the other 1000 spaces for those who can pay fees. So it becomes a mixture of both. I paid at the University of Ibadan until I got a scholarship. But government must also make scholarships available for intelligent students, so that nobody is denied access.

The issue of the 49 sacked lecturers, of the University of Ilorin is still pending, so is the current negotiation between ASUU and the government team led by Mr Gamaniel Onosode. What is the current position?

We have made tremendous progress. The issue of the Ilorin 44/49 has also been discussed. We have made an offer for the new salary structure. What has happened is that, we both revert to our principals for discussion. When we took our case to our own principal on the issue of salary, government said yes, this thing looks good but let us look at the global situation, because ASUP, from the polytechnics, Colleges of Education, even the non-teaching staff, government is saying, let us have a small committee to look at it, what global education funding profile is.

In principle we have agreed that the salary structure is good enough, we have what we call the African average. What we did was that we identified what is happening in Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, we found out what a Professor is earning there. What ASUU asked for, what we think we should offer, we both agreed that some African average was reasonable. Then we also captured all the peculiar allowances, peculiar to academic staff. So it became another one line, because we don't want to come out of the problem of consolidation considering salary structure. What has bedevilled the salary structure in the past is that, we had a long list of allowances and they kept increasing every year. Those ones have been consolidated now. So in the process we now have only three lines instead of a long line.

Then the issue of the Ilorin 49. Government said it is already in the Supreme Court. It would be nice for it to run its full course, because in the process of trying to withdraw it, there could be other complications. The lawyer from the Ministry of Justice advised us that, if we withdraw it from the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal's judgement subsists. But the argument ASUU has is that, with goodwill everything can be done. That's the situation we are in now.

 

People are saying that what the government is giving to universities is not enough but the one they are giving them, how do these Universities spend it, is there monitor these monies spent?

For federal Universities we do, and we also have what we call Nigerian Universities System Annual Review, they bring all their documents here and we look at what they have got in terms of budget and how they spent their budget. More importantly we go from here to the Auditor General's office, we also go and monitor special grant like direct teachers and lab course, the money they are given, what they spend it on, and we have a report for all those things.

We have councils in place who are supposed to write annual reports, the National Assembly has also put its foot down, before you have any budget for every year your IGR (internal general revenue) must be properly recorded.

The universities have some level of autonomy besides our monitoring, the Accountant General's office can send people to go and monitor the independence of our affairs. To a large extent we have also had some external auditors go to universities to monitor them and there was a form of punishment when they indicted some Vice-Chancellors, and also during visitation panel exercise they look into the finances of the universities and they publish in the white papers every five years.

Are you worried about the inadequate number of lecturers?

No I am not worried, we are doing capacity building.

But ASUU is alleging that these private universities are taking out experienced lecturers from public institutions and in some instances you now have a lecturer having appointments in two or three universities at the same time and that this is leading to poor teaching quality.

Unions would always have a way of saying that they want poor universities, the ones that we have, how many times have we had crisis and loss of lecturers; people send their children to these private universities because they know when you enter at a time you are going to graduate at a definite time, talk to a student from any of these federal universities they would tell you they have not learnt any thing this period, but you see, I have seen some students from Babcock, some students of accounting before they graduate they would have passed their ICAN and we are talking about quality of teachers, talk about enabling environment first, students should in fact learn on their own. In Germany it is not common for students to attend lectures; here it is 75 per cent of lecture time before you can write exams. Students are very adventurous they log on to Internet and take lectures from all parts of the world; students even provide the enabling environment first so I am not worried.

Some of the matured professors are now teaching in private Universities, even the unions; their colleagues in the department don't want those that have finished their term and retired to remain behind so they go to private universities.

Well, entry requirements; some students who have OND they want direct entry they cannot get it, because at Unilag for example they take HND for Engineering, Bachelor of Science whereas the law says OND probably upper credit.

The Senate of a university decides whom to admit, how to admit and how to teach that autonomy has been there for a long time, the law makes the minimum we did not tell you the maximum, some universities OND come in for 200 level and HND come in for 300 level for a five year course, it all depends on the demand.

How would you react to this comment that the University system is doomed that things are going to get worse, what would you prefer for the next five years?

They are not prophets; if they are prophets of doom then they are going to be disappointed, you see I was in a service one day and a Reverend Father was saying that from his parents time they have been saying that Nigeria is that and Nigeria is this but people are marrying, building and buying cars. Look at the economy, the banks since consolidation yesterday we had two group managing directors of banks coming here to say hello, before where would you even see them, you couldn't have obtained a loan in the past. We are talking about Nigerian University is in doom yet we are servicing the industries and the civil service