Einstein was a Polytechnic Graduate: Thoughts on Nigerian HNDs

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 10^th 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.

Related Articles:

Ibrahim Waziri: From HND in Nigeria to PhD in America

HND and American Universities