By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Last week’s column titled “Ibrahim Waziri: From HND in Nigeria to PhD in America...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Last week’s column titled “Ibrahim Waziri: From HND in Nigeria to PhD in America” recalled a column I wrote on December 27, 2009 on
the parity of esteem between polytechnic and university qualifications. Given
the interest last week’s column generated, I’ve decided to share a reworked and
updated version of the article:
If you are a Nigerian university graduate who has been
socialized into disdaining polytechnics as inferior higher education
institutions, think about this: Albert Einstein, the world’s most renowned
physicist and one of the most influential thinkers of all time, graduated from
the Zurich Polytechnic (now called the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Zurich) in 1900 with a diploma in mathematics and physics.
Unlike in Nigeria,
his diploma wasn’t a handicap to his pursuit of advanced degrees. He studied
for and earned his Ph.D. in experimental physics from the University of Zurich,
five years after his diploma. If a polytechnic produced one of the world’s
greatest thinkers, why are polytechnics so low on the totem pole of
post-secondary education in Nigeria? Why do we reserve ice-cold derision for
polytechnic qualifications?
Well, the answer lies
in the different philosophies that informed the establishment of polytechnics
in different countries. In the United States, “polytechnic universities” and
“institutes of technology” are, and have always been, similar in status and
structure to conventional universities. So they don’t have the reputational
baggage that our polytechnics have.
But the UK tradition
of polytechnic education, which we inherited in Nigeria, intended for
polytechnics to be no more than intermediate technical and vocational schools
to train technologists and a lowbrow, middle-level workforce. So their mandate
limited them to offer sub-degree courses in engineering and applied sciences.
In time, however, they ventured into the humanities and the
social sciences and then sought to be equated with universities. This request
was grudgingly granted only after the British government set up the Council for
National Academic Awards (CNAA)—composed wholly of people from universities—to
examine and validate the quality of polytechnic qualifications.
Nevertheless, in spite of this elaborate institutional
quality control (which had no equivalent for universities) the higher national
diploma (HND) was treated as only the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree
“without honors.” In university administration lingo, only a “pass” degree—the
lowest possible rank in British degree classification—is considered a degree
“without honors.”
This means that first-class, upper-second-class,
lower-second-class and third-class degrees have “honors” and that the HND is
only equivalent to a “pass” degree. That’s why, traditionally, British
universities did not—and many still do not— admit HND graduates to master’s
degree programs (even if the HND graduates had a distinction in their diploma)
without first requiring them to undergo a one-year remedial postgraduate
diploma program—just like people with “pass” degrees must undergo a remedial
program before being admitted to master’s degree programs.
This invidious discrimination against polytechnic graduates
and manifestly preferential treatment for university graduates, often called
the “Binary Divide” in UK higher education parlance, predictably gave rise to
pervasive feelings of deep, bitter anger and ill-will in the system.
So in 1992, under the Further and Higher Education Act, the
“binary divide” was abolished, and all the 35 polytechnics in the UK were
elevated to universities and given powers to award bachelor’s, master’s, and
Ph.D. degrees. There are no more polytechnics—and the HND qualification— in the UK.
Most other countries
with British-style binary divides have also eliminated the distinction between
polytechnics and universities to varying degrees. In Australia, polytechnics
were elevated to “universities of technology” in the 1990s.
Hong Kong, a former British colony like Nigeria, upgraded
its two polytechnics—The Hong Kong Polytechnic and the City Polytechnic of Hong
Kong—to universities in 1994 and 1995 respectively.
New Zealand also merged all its polytechnics with existing
universities and allowed only one—Auckland University of Technology (formerly
the Auckland Institute of Technology)—to transmute into a full-fledged
university in the 1990s.
Greece abolished its
polytechnics and upgraded them to universities in 2001. In South Africa, from
2004, polytechnics, known as technikons, were either merged with universities
or upgraded to “universities of technologies,” although with limited rights and
privileges.
In Germany, polytechnics can now, in addition to diplomas,
award bachelor’s and master’s degrees in technical and vocational subjects (and
in some humanities and social science courses such as communication studies,
business and management, etc.) but cannot award PhDs.
In Sierra Leone, where polytechnic education began only in
2001, the country’s three polytechnics award bachelor’s degrees in a limited
number of courses, in addition to awarding sub-degree diplomas and
certificates.
Kenya, another former
British colony, merged its polytechnics with older universities and made them
degree-awarding institutions since 2009. And Ghana has announced plans to convert its polytechnics into “technical universities”
starting this month.
In India, Pakistan, and Singapore, polytechnics don’t grant
higher education qualifications; students are admitted to a 3-year diploma
program in technical and vocation fields from what we would call SS1 in Nigeria,
that is, after the 10th year of formal schooling. So Indian, Pakistan,
and Singaporean polytechnics are actually an alternative to traditional
secondary education; they are not higher education institutions like Nigerian
polytechnics are. (India’s “institutes of technology” award bachelor’s degrees
and aren’t the same as “polytechnics.”)
Malaysia’s premier polytechnic, Ungku Omar Polytechnic,
offers bachelor’s degrees in addition to diplomas and advanced diplomas. Other
polytechnics in the country only offer diplomas and advanced diplomas.
What the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Hong Kong,
Greece, Kenya, etc. achieved in the 1990s and 2000s— that is, abolition of the
often unfair binary between polytechnic and university qualifications—had been
achieved in Albert Einstein’s polytechnic in 1909, five years after he got his
diploma there. It was, like most other polytechnics in Switzerland, elevated to
a full-fledged university, although it is still fondly called “Poly” by its
students, staff, and alumni to this day.
Almost no country in the world, except Nigeria, retains the
binary divide between polytechnics and universities. Nigeria has no business
being the lone exception.
So this is my recommendation to education minister Adamu
Adamu: The HND should be abolished forthwith. However, the OND should be
retained to supply the nation’s middle-level labor pool and to serve as a
foundational qualification for entry into B. Tech. degree programs.
Small and mid-sized polytechnics should continue to offer
the OND and big, resource-rich polytechnics like Yaba Tech, Kaduna Polytechnic,
IMT Enugu, Federal Poly Auchi, etc. should be upgraded and converted to
full-fledged universities of technology.
Having taught mass communication on a part-time basis at the
Kaduna Polytechnic 16 years ago, and knowing that polytechnic students are just
as good—and as bad—as university students, I am eager to see Nigeria join the
rest of the world in eliminating the unfair binary divide between universities
and polytechnics.
As Dr. Waziri’s example shows, we’ve been burying our
Einsteins for years. That has got to stop.
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