---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Aliyu Bala Aliyu<aliyubala.aliyu@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 4:21 PM
Subject: {'Yan Arewa} Epidemic of First Class Graduates
To: YanArewa <YanArewa@yahoogroups.com>, dandalinsiyasa <dandalinsiyasa@yahoogroups.com>, Raayiriga <Raayiriga@yahoogroups.com>
Epidemic of First Class Graduates
27 Aug 2013
Font Size: a / A
0101Okey Ikechukwu backpagex - AKIN-OSUNTOKUN-Back-Pg-New.jpg
Edifying Elucidations By Okey Ikechukwu. Email, okey.ikechukwu@thisdaylive.com
All of a sudden, academic excellence descended on Nigeria's private
universities. The university's good fortune was in the news a few
weeks back, as it rolled our 40 First Class graduates across several
disciplines. The same university also produced over 270 other
graduands with the Second Class (upper division) degrees for the same
academic year. If this number of high flyers is taken as a ratio of
the total population of graduating students for the year under
reference, it may probably turn out to be an unprecedented
development. Is this bad in itself? I don't think so, if the
performance is a sign that academic excellence is on the ascendant at
last. But many observers fear the worst.
The first point of entry on this matter is perhaps to ask how many of
the lecturers in the said institution are First Class graduates, First
Class scholars and First Class academics. Of course they may be
exceptionally brilliant university teachers, with a consistent record
of excellence throughout their academic life. In that case, they
should naturally produce as many of 'their kind' as possible, should
they not? Let us assume it, even though the experience is scholars and
academics of such pedigree do not 'produce' so many of their kind in
one fell swoop.
That brings us to the (possibly mischievous) thought that maybe, just
maybe, the lecturers are mostly not first class products of the
system. What if majority of the lecturers were not known for dazzling
academic performance and, therefore, were not really the types that
got too many "A" grades as students? What if the recent results is
only an indication that the school is unable to control the intrepid
commitment to the subversion of true scholarship that has become the
norm in most institutions? What if some desperate persons are now
awarding marks and degree with a cheerful disregard of the conditions
under which such things should be done?
But, just in case someone is thinking of prancing forward to sound
indignant and very surprised, let it be said for the record that there
is nothing essentially surprising here. The rot in the system is not
new. What is a bit new is the level of impunity, along with a
shamelessly cash-driven academic culture, that is being exhibited
everywhere. Young graduates now seek jobs as fresh lecturers with the
clear and primary target of ensuring they retain an assistant who will
coordinate, collate and collect all manner of 'returns' from students
who are serious about passing their examinations. Scholars of
questionable academic standing are also cheerfully recruited without
any concern about their academic qualifications. The new recruits,
too, have no such concerns. Thus a homogenous group that is committed
to a species of learning that can best be described as subversive
scholarship emerges, thrives, overruns the system and overwhelms the
few sensible scholars among them.
One basic feature of university education is its gates are open to all
who can enter, while its bowels are conceived to retain only the best
of its products as propagators of the system. That is why the best
graduating students, or others of clear scholarly promise, are usually
retained as lecturers. But no Nigerian university has been able to
retain most of its best products in the last 20 years. Better paying
sectors of the economy has drawn away some of the very best from the
academia over the decades and the challenges of the system have done
the rest of the damage.
With the universities unable to retain their best, and with even their
second best close to extinction as lecturers and professors, what you
find in most tertiary institutions today are actually third-rate
academics who are churning out fourth rate ad even 'no rate' materials
with embarrassing excitement. The academically sound and truly
committed ones among them are an absolute minority. They are also
often the butt of coarse jokes from some of the most depraved of their
colleagues, even as they are among those most hated by irritated of
would-be students; who find their insistence on doing the right thing
unacceptable. In sum, many people who now masquerade as lecturers in
many universities have no business near a university, however
conceptualised.
A related problem, but one which neither the National Universities
Commission (NUC) nor the universities themselves can deal with
anymore, is the fact that many of today's senior academics climbed to
their currents heights via controversial routes. While some became
professors simply because they were so appointed by some new
university of questionable pedigree, others became lecturers using
duly awarded Masters Degrees that were actually not the type of
Masters Degrees anyone should use for teaching in a serious university
at all. These latter categories of lecturers are graduates who
obtained 'weak' first degree. Such graduates are usually constrained
to do a one-year M.A., or M.Sc. Degree in a place like UNILAG, to
address the perceived academic deficiencies by the system. It is after
this that they are then allowed to register for an M.Phil, as a proper
Masters Degree before going further.
The academic distillation process was quite rigorous. Some post
graduate students were even actively and deliberately discouraged from
taking their delusional academic aspirations too seriously, so that
the system does not run the risk of having them let loose on people's
children one day as lecturers. But that was before. That was when the
university product came out as a person duly educated in his chosen
field but with enough knowledge of the world and other disciplines to
live his life with intelligence and grace. That was when the
university unpretentiously addressed itself to all, but intrinsically
appealed to only a few whose goals and aspirations tended in that
direction. That was when vocational and technical schools complemented
polytechnics and trade centres to give people survival skills. That
was when university education was not linked to a desperate search for
no-existent jobs and the provision of jobs was not seen as the
exclusive preserve of governments.
So let no one start to sound too surprised. Let no one also pretend
that academic progression in many of our universities is anything but
a well-contrived group fraud that is nurtured and facilitated by
"incestuous scholarship". What other name can we find for the practice
of promoting lecturers largely because of their often wishy-washy
publications in departmental or internal academic journals? Among
these journals, the few with any pretensions to some rigour acquire
this contrived reputation by the mere fact of their publishing
materials sent by colleagues from other universities. So, if you
publish mine and publish yours, then we are all contributing to
learning and making serious interventions in 'learned' journals. This
is incestuous scholarship, nothing more.
Beyond the foregoing, there is the matter of whether the universities
are actually receiving 'teachable' materials from the society and from
the other lower levels of the national academic ladder. When a
thoroughly compromised human capital factory is supplied with low
quality raw materials and these materials are badly processed, it is
only natural that the final product should be a disaster when taken to
the market. So those who are fretting and sometimes heaping all the
blame on the university system should take a second look.
The pre-primary level of education is practically unregulated. Any
garage, disused store or leaking warehouse may come in handy for
anyone who wants to set up such a school. Primary and secondary school
dropouts, house maids and old women of questionable care-giving
capacity are often the academic feedstock when you need teachers for
pre-primary education. Primary education itself is distinguished by
its own handicaps. All states of the federation that have tried to
ascertain academic standing of their secondary school teachers by
giving them the tests meant for their junior students were shocked to
discover that over 60% of the teachers failed the tests. But the tests
they failed were taken from the syllabus of their junior students.
We need not say anything about the secondary school that serve as the
last middle man between parents and the university education of their
children. Do we know what they do, what they teach, where they are,
how many of them are "special centres", when last they were inspected,
or even when last they were visited by anyone. Until 2006, the
official records put the number of secondary schools in Nigeria at
9,700. A physical inspection of all secondary schools carried out that
year revealed that there were actually 14,543 secondary schools – and
possibly more. In other words, our tertiary institutions have been
receiving 'ungraded' raw materials from pirate groups and break-in
purveyors of secondary school certification examinations.
Notwithstanding the fact that examination malpractice is on the
rampage, the nation has consistently recorded between 78 and 90 per
cent failure rates in competitive final examinations for over 20
years.
But to get back to the matter of the swarm of First Class graduates
now being littered on sidewalks and street corners, it will be
interesting to have someone show us the 'academic history' of the
first class graduates for the last 12 years, including their nursery
(if available), primary and secondary school academic records? We
know that most Nigerian private universities still scrounge on the
leftovers after JAMB examinations and even after their own first
internal admission examinations. We have it on good authority that a
candidate's score is rarely a deterrent if the parents or guardians
want to secure admission in most of the universities. It is quite
possible that these universities have very brilliant academics in the
majority; or that these brilliant products of the school we are
talking about are actually the high flyers in their JAMB examinations.
Yes it is possible, just as it is possible that the US President is my
cousin, a happy, go-lucky is actually Igbo Chap whose name of
Obarakunime Obioma was bastardised – or vandalised - to read Barack
Obama by the Americans. Please!!!
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/epidemic-of-first-class-graduates/157360/
------------------------------------
GABA DAI GABA DAI 'YAN AREWA, KULLUM MUN CI GABA WAJEN SABGA TA KWARAI. - DAN KWAIRO
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From: Aliyu Bala Aliyu<aliyubala.aliyu@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 4:21 PM
Subject: {'Yan Arewa} Epidemic of First Class Graduates
To: YanArewa <YanArewa@yahoogroups.com>, dandalinsiyasa <dandalinsiyasa@yahoogroups.com>, Raayiriga <Raayiriga@yahoogroups.com>
Epidemic of First Class Graduates
27 Aug 2013
Font Size: a / A
0101Okey Ikechukwu backpagex - AKIN-OSUNTOKUN-Back-Pg-New.jpg
Edifying Elucidations By Okey Ikechukwu. Email, okey.ikechukwu@thisdaylive.com
All of a sudden, academic excellence descended on Nigeria's private
universities. The university's good fortune was in the news a few
weeks back, as it rolled our 40 First Class graduates across several
disciplines. The same university also produced over 270 other
graduands with the Second Class (upper division) degrees for the same
academic year. If this number of high flyers is taken as a ratio of
the total population of graduating students for the year under
reference, it may probably turn out to be an unprecedented
development. Is this bad in itself? I don't think so, if the
performance is a sign that academic excellence is on the ascendant at
last. But many observers fear the worst.
The first point of entry on this matter is perhaps to ask how many of
the lecturers in the said institution are First Class graduates, First
Class scholars and First Class academics. Of course they may be
exceptionally brilliant university teachers, with a consistent record
of excellence throughout their academic life. In that case, they
should naturally produce as many of 'their kind' as possible, should
they not? Let us assume it, even though the experience is scholars and
academics of such pedigree do not 'produce' so many of their kind in
one fell swoop.
That brings us to the (possibly mischievous) thought that maybe, just
maybe, the lecturers are mostly not first class products of the
system. What if majority of the lecturers were not known for dazzling
academic performance and, therefore, were not really the types that
got too many "A" grades as students? What if the recent results is
only an indication that the school is unable to control the intrepid
commitment to the subversion of true scholarship that has become the
norm in most institutions? What if some desperate persons are now
awarding marks and degree with a cheerful disregard of the conditions
under which such things should be done?
But, just in case someone is thinking of prancing forward to sound
indignant and very surprised, let it be said for the record that there
is nothing essentially surprising here. The rot in the system is not
new. What is a bit new is the level of impunity, along with a
shamelessly cash-driven academic culture, that is being exhibited
everywhere. Young graduates now seek jobs as fresh lecturers with the
clear and primary target of ensuring they retain an assistant who will
coordinate, collate and collect all manner of 'returns' from students
who are serious about passing their examinations. Scholars of
questionable academic standing are also cheerfully recruited without
any concern about their academic qualifications. The new recruits,
too, have no such concerns. Thus a homogenous group that is committed
to a species of learning that can best be described as subversive
scholarship emerges, thrives, overruns the system and overwhelms the
few sensible scholars among them.
One basic feature of university education is its gates are open to all
who can enter, while its bowels are conceived to retain only the best
of its products as propagators of the system. That is why the best
graduating students, or others of clear scholarly promise, are usually
retained as lecturers. But no Nigerian university has been able to
retain most of its best products in the last 20 years. Better paying
sectors of the economy has drawn away some of the very best from the
academia over the decades and the challenges of the system have done
the rest of the damage.
With the universities unable to retain their best, and with even their
second best close to extinction as lecturers and professors, what you
find in most tertiary institutions today are actually third-rate
academics who are churning out fourth rate ad even 'no rate' materials
with embarrassing excitement. The academically sound and truly
committed ones among them are an absolute minority. They are also
often the butt of coarse jokes from some of the most depraved of their
colleagues, even as they are among those most hated by irritated of
would-be students; who find their insistence on doing the right thing
unacceptable. In sum, many people who now masquerade as lecturers in
many universities have no business near a university, however
conceptualised.
A related problem, but one which neither the National Universities
Commission (NUC) nor the universities themselves can deal with
anymore, is the fact that many of today's senior academics climbed to
their currents heights via controversial routes. While some became
professors simply because they were so appointed by some new
university of questionable pedigree, others became lecturers using
duly awarded Masters Degrees that were actually not the type of
Masters Degrees anyone should use for teaching in a serious university
at all. These latter categories of lecturers are graduates who
obtained 'weak' first degree. Such graduates are usually constrained
to do a one-year M.A., or M.Sc. Degree in a place like UNILAG, to
address the perceived academic deficiencies by the system. It is after
this that they are then allowed to register for an M.Phil, as a proper
Masters Degree before going further.
The academic distillation process was quite rigorous. Some post
graduate students were even actively and deliberately discouraged from
taking their delusional academic aspirations too seriously, so that
the system does not run the risk of having them let loose on people's
children one day as lecturers. But that was before. That was when the
university product came out as a person duly educated in his chosen
field but with enough knowledge of the world and other disciplines to
live his life with intelligence and grace. That was when the
university unpretentiously addressed itself to all, but intrinsically
appealed to only a few whose goals and aspirations tended in that
direction. That was when vocational and technical schools complemented
polytechnics and trade centres to give people survival skills. That
was when university education was not linked to a desperate search for
no-existent jobs and the provision of jobs was not seen as the
exclusive preserve of governments.
So let no one start to sound too surprised. Let no one also pretend
that academic progression in many of our universities is anything but
a well-contrived group fraud that is nurtured and facilitated by
"incestuous scholarship". What other name can we find for the practice
of promoting lecturers largely because of their often wishy-washy
publications in departmental or internal academic journals? Among
these journals, the few with any pretensions to some rigour acquire
this contrived reputation by the mere fact of their publishing
materials sent by colleagues from other universities. So, if you
publish mine and publish yours, then we are all contributing to
learning and making serious interventions in 'learned' journals. This
is incestuous scholarship, nothing more.
Beyond the foregoing, there is the matter of whether the universities
are actually receiving 'teachable' materials from the society and from
the other lower levels of the national academic ladder. When a
thoroughly compromised human capital factory is supplied with low
quality raw materials and these materials are badly processed, it is
only natural that the final product should be a disaster when taken to
the market. So those who are fretting and sometimes heaping all the
blame on the university system should take a second look.
The pre-primary level of education is practically unregulated. Any
garage, disused store or leaking warehouse may come in handy for
anyone who wants to set up such a school. Primary and secondary school
dropouts, house maids and old women of questionable care-giving
capacity are often the academic feedstock when you need teachers for
pre-primary education. Primary education itself is distinguished by
its own handicaps. All states of the federation that have tried to
ascertain academic standing of their secondary school teachers by
giving them the tests meant for their junior students were shocked to
discover that over 60% of the teachers failed the tests. But the tests
they failed were taken from the syllabus of their junior students.
We need not say anything about the secondary school that serve as the
last middle man between parents and the university education of their
children. Do we know what they do, what they teach, where they are,
how many of them are "special centres", when last they were inspected,
or even when last they were visited by anyone. Until 2006, the
official records put the number of secondary schools in Nigeria at
9,700. A physical inspection of all secondary schools carried out that
year revealed that there were actually 14,543 secondary schools – and
possibly more. In other words, our tertiary institutions have been
receiving 'ungraded' raw materials from pirate groups and break-in
purveyors of secondary school certification examinations.
Notwithstanding the fact that examination malpractice is on the
rampage, the nation has consistently recorded between 78 and 90 per
cent failure rates in competitive final examinations for over 20
years.
But to get back to the matter of the swarm of First Class graduates
now being littered on sidewalks and street corners, it will be
interesting to have someone show us the 'academic history' of the
first class graduates for the last 12 years, including their nursery
(if available), primary and secondary school academic records? We
know that most Nigerian private universities still scrounge on the
leftovers after JAMB examinations and even after their own first
internal admission examinations. We have it on good authority that a
candidate's score is rarely a deterrent if the parents or guardians
want to secure admission in most of the universities. It is quite
possible that these universities have very brilliant academics in the
majority; or that these brilliant products of the school we are
talking about are actually the high flyers in their JAMB examinations.
Yes it is possible, just as it is possible that the US President is my
cousin, a happy, go-lucky is actually Igbo Chap whose name of
Obarakunime Obioma was bastardised – or vandalised - to read Barack
Obama by the Americans. Please!!!
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/epidemic-of-first-class-graduates/157360/
------------------------------------
GABA DAI GABA DAI 'YAN AREWA, KULLUM MUN CI GABA WAJEN SABGA TA KWARAI. - DAN KWAIRO
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YanArewa/
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