In this interview with ADEGUNLE OLUGBAMILA, Charles K. Ayo, the immediate past Vice Chancellor of the Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, and a professor of Computer & Information Science, says NUC may hamper creativity in universities as certain diploma programmes run by some universities were borne out of ingenuity, and their scrapping may cause demoralisation.

Do you support NUC’s decision to scrap diploma programmes in universities?

Whether or not they are branded as certificate or diploma, any programme within the university system that is not run at degree level will tend to be branded diploma or certificate; but placing a blanket ban on all will kill ingenuity.

I also want to admit that if the university system and polytechnics are running same courses, there are bound to be conflict. So rather than outright ban, there should be a demarcation. Courses that are run at diploma level in polytechnics should be left within the polytechnics. However certain courses could be drawn out of ingenuity in service delivery. There are a number of novel courses that will benefit both teachers, students and professionals. I mean courses that are not being run in Nigeria before but evolved as a result of the dynamic nature of events.

Could you give us instances?

For instance, while I was in office as VC of Covenant University, I was already working on a diploma programme in Electronic Health and Trado Medicine, which is not run anywhere but rather it is a course intended to bring about a level of awareness for medical doctors and other professionals in medical field, with respect to delivering medical services to remote centres.

These courses are not taught at degree level but rather it is just a novelty that one is bringing into the system. If you look at the state of our health and going by the statistics presented, when you have 0.28 physician per thousand of population, it won’t take us anywhere. But if as an institution we have e-health portal on the web and on that we have provision to collaborate with medical doctors all over the world, then there should be a little knowledge on how medical doctors can participate in it, that is the way I believe we can improve the quality of health services in Nigeria.

Not only that we are even looking at online education. We need some progrmmes that will further enable the populace benefit maximally particularly our professors who may not be aware on how to perfectly run a programme with what they have. But nothing stops university system from short courses

Do you think NUC’s decision was to improve universities’ ranking globally?

I do not believe so! There are parameters for that. Teaching is one, staff-student ratio is another. We also have number of international students, foreign faculty, research citation and others as parameters that determine ranking. Like you rightly mentioned, running diploma programmes in universities might just be a way of jerking up internally generated revenue of such university, but not affecting ranking.

So, what could have influenced the directive by NUC?

The diploma being awarded in polytechnics are categorised into two - OND and HND and looking at the job schedule, there are appropriate placements for the two. But in universities, where do you place them? (holders of diploma). This is rather causing some sort of confusion, and to think some universities will run a diploma programme and from there to advanced diploma form, is unacceptable. We have seen individuals who went this route to shortchange the system by going further to have post graduate diploma, Master in Science and even PhD.

I sincerely believe we should streamline the award of diploma and advanced diploma certificate. These are not certification that one will get and be looking for job or admission in universities but rather it will enhance job performance of professionals.

SOURCE: http://thenationonlineng.net/nuc-directive-will-kill-ingenuity-varsities/