Enhancing teaching and research in Nigerian universities
According to the Executive Secretary, Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Engr. (Dr) Muttaqha Rabe Darma, “the ranking was done using 15 indices grouped into five categories. None of the requirements (indices) in each of the categories was met by any Nigerian university not to talk of the aggregate of the categories”. Allegations of bias against […]
According to the Executive Secretary, Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Engr. (Dr) Muttaqha Rabe Darma, “the ranking was done using 15 indices grouped into five categories. None of the requirements (indices) in each of the categories was met by any Nigerian university not to talk of the aggregate of the categories”. Allegations of bias against Nigerian universities or indeed African universities by the assessors may not hold when it is realized that a Ghanaian university is ranked 175 and a university in South Africa ranked 253 in the global ranking of universities.
Teaching methods, research and use of research findings were the major ranking tools and therefore should not have come as a surprise to the discerning mind that no Nigerian university made the list of top 400 best universities in the world. It is however regrettable that more than 58 years after the first university was founded in Nigeria, not much of the researches conducted in Nigerian universities have been found credible enough for incubation and use by the industry and only very few publications by university lecturers and professors were considered worthy enough for international assessment and replication annually. PTDF Executive Secretary identifies the problems in Nigeria’s ivory towers to include lack of interest in teaching and research as well as poor remuneration and infrastructural deficiencies. He said that over 60% of university teachers in Nigeria are teaching not because they are interested in teaching but because teaching provides a means of livelihood. Engr. Darma, himself a former university lecturer said at the induction ceremony for participants of PTDF University Lecturer’s Skills Enhancement Programme held in Abuja, that academicians who conduct research and published papers do this not with the intention of expanding the frontiers of knowledge, but rather to enhance their prospects of promotion. This, he said, is the reason why internationally acclaimed journals hardly published the so-called academic papers of Nigerian university lecturers and professors as such papers hardly meet the required academic standards. He went further in his diagnosis of the state of teaching and research in Nigerian universities to posit that university lecturers in Nigeria are only compelled to publish books not for intellectual accomplishments, but for the simple reason that the university system now frowns against the production and sale of “hand outs” to students.
Most university administrators and academics in Nigeria’s ivory towers may not be comfortable with this seemingly forensic analysis of the causes of the falling standard of education in our universities, but the truth is reflected in the standard of the graduates produced by some universities.
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) is the only agency of government mandated with the responsibility of developing the skills, capacities and capabilities of Nigerians to effectively operate and manage Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. The Fund therefore provides training and education to qualified Nigerians through sponsorship to Masters and Doctoral degree programmes in top ranked universities abroad, as well as enhance local institutional capabilities to provide such trainings and education in-country through the upgrade of departments offering oil and gas related courses in selected Nigerian universities.
The Fund, in consideration of the immediate problem of the effect of teaching and research on the learning capabilities of students, introduced the University Lecturer’s Skills Enhancement Programme, to add value to the teaching and learning of oil and gas related courses in PTDF upgraded departments in selected universities across the country. The programme was introduced for lecturers in training positions in these upgraded departments, to enrich and improve their practice of teaching and research in core oil and gas related disciplines. Participating lecturers are exposed to modern techniques of teaching, research, supervision, assessment and marking procedure, presentation skills, leadership, strategic thinking, planning, change management, partnership, shadow learning, modern techniques of conducting research, research presentation, mentoring and general administration.
The University Lecturers Skills Enhancement Programme is conceived to be of six months duration split into three months overseas training covering classroom teaching methods, shadow teaching and industry collaboration, while the three months in-country training covers teaching practice, supervision skills practice, undertaking reflective analysis, reporting and feedback. The Newcastle University in the United Kingdom is one of the institutions engaged by the Fund as facilitators of the programme.
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund is exploring new frontiers for the expansion of its training programmes, particularly the university lecturer’s skills enhancement training programme and Doctoral scholarship. To this end, the Fund has opened up discussions with officials of the Grenoble Graduate Business School (GGBS) France in collaboration with the Grenoble school of Management the institute of technology Grenoble, and institute of petroleum, Paris France (IFP) to set up a programme for the training of lecturers under the PTDF university lecturer’s skills enhancement training programme. Under the arrangement, the Fund will sponsor 40 University lecturers in batches of 20 for the programme in Grenoble. It will run for 12 weeks by the faculty and staff of Grenoble Graduate School of Business, International Institute of Technology Grenoble and the Institute of Petroleum France.
The Grenoble Graduate School of Business is one of the top schools in Europe for Master’s and Doctoral research programmes. The Fund also indicated interest in replicating a programme run by the Grenoble Graduate Business School, the Doctor of Business Administration, in institutions being developed or upgraded by the Fund in Nigeria. In this regard, officials of the Business School will visit the proposed National Institute of Petroleum Policy and Strategy, Kaduna, to lay the framework for establishing a Doctor of Business Administration in oil and gas management.
Otisi wrote from Abuja