The advent of private universities in Nigeria was considered a welcome development for the simple reason that the public universities had become anything but centres for excellence. Aside the endless strikes by the lecturers and the non-academic staff which sometimes lasted as long as one academic session, the neglect of federal and state universities by successive governments has also resulted in a situation in which students of these universities were never certain as to the number of years they would spend for their degrees.
Unfortunately, the emergence of private universities does not seem to be raising academic standards given their penchant for indiscriminate award of degrees that are not worth the papers upon which they are printed.
Indeed, the award of first class and second class upper division degrees to just about anybody, which is fast becoming a trend in many of these private universities, brings to question the credibility of the degrees and the institutions that award them.
For instance, 140 graduates of the Covenant University, Ogun State, were recently awarded first class degrees while 720 graduates received second class upper division. Similarly, the Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, also in Ogun State, graduated 1,359 students, of which 52 bagged first class honours, with 1,059 graduates making second class upper division. It is noteworthy that before now, a first class degree from our university is considered a rare honour to bestow upon a graduate whose intellect is beyond reproach. These days, some of the graduates who parade first class degrees, especially from the private universities, are of doubtful academic pedigree.
This is already telling in the job markets. According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), many of the "so-called first class and second class (upper) graduates" who participated in the company's recent job interview failed to justify their certificate classifications as 80 per cent of them scored less than 20 per cent in the aptitude tests. Also not long ago the Nigeria Police revealed that many first degree holders who came for its recruitment tests performed rather woefully.
A number of reasons have been adduced in explaining the shameless conferment of first and second class upper division degrees to graduates that do not measure up to the expected standard. One such reason is the astronomical tuition fees charged by the private universities. When parents are lured to pay huge sums with the promise that their children would receive the best of university education, they would expect nothing other than "excellence" which in this case is a first class degree or minimum of second class upper division.
Another reason, which flows from the first, is that in the bid to position their products for jobs, the private universities are in an unhealthy competition to produce higher number of first class degrees in order to justify being the "best" among equals.
The Vice-Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, Prof. Adebiyi Daramola, actually believes this to be the main reason for the indiscriminate award of first class degrees to graduating students by the private universities in the country. He said it is nothing but "a marketing strategy" adopted by the authorities of those private universities to woo wealthy individuals looking for institutions that would make their children first class graduates. But this, according to Daramola is counterproductive as "many employers of labour would not touch these graduates with a long pole because academic standards have been compromised by the authorities of these private universities."
We concur with Daramola's position even as we believe that there is an urgent need to put a halt to the ugly trend. We therefore call on the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Committee of Vice Chancellors (CVC) to take a serious look at the rate at which first class degrees are being "manufactured" by the nation's private universities.
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