‘The universal city and global relevance’
THERE is therefore no doubt that the ‘Universal City’ called the University needs internationalisation at this age of digital technologies when artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening to take over everybody’s job schedules in the world of work. Note the contextualisation in North America, China, U.K; the goal is ‘public diplomacy overseas’ and great and strategic public relations for their (universal cities) Universities.
‘Where are we on internationslisation? We are nowhere for now!’
Recall I said to you earlier, this topic, ‘Internationalisation of University Education for Global Relevance…’ isn’t to entertain the Adekunle Ajasin University administrators and students.
The lecture is structured to ‘rouse the conscience of the nation’. Remember Frederick Douglass who was credited with the saying that when they were fighting for slaves to be freed in the United States: he declared to the adamant rulers of the time, ‘The conscience of the nation must be roused’. That is the purpose today: to rouse the conscience of the nation and to honour the memory of Pa Adekunle Ajasin who was part of the pioneers of educational administration of the then Action Group. The late Ajasin also set up the organic Ondo State University in Ado Ekiti, not in Owo his home town where he stayed in his house built as a teacher and principal of Imade College, Owo even as Governor of old Ondo State.
We must rouse the conscience of this nation Madiba predicted would be the trigger for the rise or fall of the black race. Remember before he flew away in 2013, Mandela had granted an interview to a Nigerian diplomat though whom he noted: ‘The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence…’
On May 23, 2021, I wrote an article on this construct in which I appealed to the elders in the land to wake up from their deep slumber because Nigeria that Nelson Mandela identified as the only source of pride and confidence for the black people of the world was really on the brink.
At the moment, there are indeed visible pieces of evidence of trouble from the way things are happening fast across the country. And sadly, the Western powers would be the first to hail any harm to Nigeria as democracy in action. They will tell us triumphantly that we told you so. But our greedy, callous and mentally lazy leaders should note that the atomic bomb they are using to destroy the country we elected them to run is: they have all left EDUCATION TO THE VAGARIES OF THIS THING CALLED INTERNATIONALISATION OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION FOR GLOBAL RELEVANCE.
Our leaders at all levels are enjoying. They have for 24 years left all our so-called federal roads impassable. They fly over them. When they don’t fly, they have billions of naira worth of SUVs to drive on the roads they failed to construct. They claim there is no money. But they can waste the little left out of our debt servicing ration to buy N160m per unit worth of SUVs at the Senate of 109 members and N130 million per unit worth of SUVs for 360 members of the House of Representative members. They send all their children to schools abroad including Ghana, Benin Republic, Sudan, etc. That is their own definition of Internationalisation.
Disrupt your curriculum: education is on concurrent list
And so the curriculum has to be disrupted: old journalism school curriculum has been disrupted through unbundling of mass communication courses: Journalism, for instance in this institution will now be added to some areas of computer science to produce 21st century journalists and communication experts in public relations, advertising, film making, etc.
So, where will teachers get re-training from? You need strategic partnership. And it begins with professors of practice and then align some of your courses to meet some local needs in Ondo state communities. After all, the University of Ife was set up in 1962 to enhance Tropical Agriculture and Tropical Medicine. They set up College of Health Sciences instead of College of Medicine. Federal authorities seized the university in 1975 and the rest is history.
Leaders, managers & disruptive innovation.
Since the complexity of managing tertiary institutions can be overwhelming today, I would like to suggest that chief executives and even members of Governing Council of the universities should seek to get some from of Business and Management Education, not from motivational speakers’ books but from Management and Business formal schools. Modern chief executives need such education to be able to manage not just academic programmes but there are issues in managing budgetary and financial issues. Experience has shown that modern CEOs and even faith-based organisations’ superintendents, professionals such as medical doctors, engineers, architects, senior journalists obtain even MBAs and DBAs to be able to cope with leadership and management issues in the 21stcentury. Educational institutions are complex to manage. Most times, the Governing Council leaders and universities’ chief executives clash for lack of knowledge of corporate governance issues arising from the university system. Sometimes, some Governing Council Members overreach themselves and cross some ethical redlines to share power with the Vice Chancellors for lack of knowledge. This new world order is too complex and so you can’t rely on your intuition only to survive. The deliverable here is that leaders too need management education. Lee Kuan Yew after reading Law In U.K went to School of Government in Harvard School Governance. Today there is a genius factory in Singapore as they also have in the United States. Yes Genius Factory where they keep “The Nobel Prize Sperm Bank”. David Plotz wrote a superb book on the quest for genius and ultimately family. That is part of the secrets for American exceptionalism. That is what we need to tell our dealers who parade themselves as leaders that quality in science, technology engineering, art and mathematics at this time is the only weapon for country and global competiveness.
That is why South Africa is the only outstanding country in South Africa that is part of the internationalisation of tertiary education. South Africa is the only African country that is part of G-20 economies in the world. South Africa is the only African country that is part of BRICS-(Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). They are seeking to expand it. Nigeria isn’t a member of the two powerful economic cartels yet. Check all the rating bodies for universities every year, out of the ten best universities in Africa region, South Africa only retains at least first 6-7. And so that is why you can’t dispute the fact that there is a nexus between quality in education and development of any country. That is why South Africa has MTN and MultiChoice here as ‘principalities and powers’ we worship every day.
Lest we forget: Oronsaye panel’s report on education…
The Oronsaye panel on public sector reform has since 2012 reported with data that part of the trouble with the Nigerian University system is that the authorities spend more on non-academic activities and non-academic staff than academic staff and academic activities. There are more issues in the document including consolidation of more agencies in education to be known as Tertiary Education Commission. What can chief executives of tertiary institutions do differently even at state levels to reduce wastes and redundancies in the universities? This is one of the reasons I have suggested that we need to do imbibe Toffler’s word that we should learn unlearn and relearn so that we can cope with the new world of managing universities too.
So, let’s rise from here with a deliverable that we need to disrupt even our thinking since we can’t change the owners of the universities today. We need to tell our owners that South African government, for instance, pay directly any lecturers in South Africa whose articles are published in popular foreign journals. We should tell managers of tertiary institutions too that they need to restructure and equip their computer engineering and science schools to enable even medical schools and other schools that the modern schools are setting up learning too outside the classrooms. Check the U.K National Open University’s website and note that they have added Medical Sciences as part of the courses in a distance learning institution. But this isn’t feasible without proper equipment of computer science and engineering schools. This explains why Google took its Artificial Intelligence, West Africa Office to Ghana: they couldn’t find a well equipped Computer Schools in any of Nigerian universities.
There is a huge challenge of skills gap even in the public sector where there is already a succession crisis. The Obasanjo administration noted this before 2007 when the General left office. That was why they got a White Paper approved for Rare Skills Salary Structure in the public service remuneration package.
Skills gap exists because the institutions of higher learning aren’t well equipped for products to fill certain vacancies in the manufacturing, oil and gas and telecom sectors.
There are still a lot of job openings in the country that businesses are unable to fill because they can’t the right qualifications. Many of the job openings are in the manufacturing sector. A departing chief executive officer of Nestle once cried out about the huge cost of retraining graduates of physical sciences they had been recruiting.
This is one of the reasons for internationalisation of university education – to equip graduates for today’s corporate governance, production and leadership challenges.
But what is the trouble today? There is no universe in the university. At the moment, there is an urgent need for our leaders to disrupt our national policy on education to reflect first, national character. What is the real trouble? When there was a universe, the university of Ibadan could welcome Professor Kenneth Dike as the Vice Chancellor of the premier university; the University of Lagos could celebrate Professor Eni Njoku as its Vice Chancellor; the University of Benin could not resist Professor Adamu Baike (Christian from Kano) as Vice Chancellor, the University of Ife could not rebuff Professor Cyril Agodi Onwumechili as its fourth Vice Chancellor. But today indigenes of the local government playing host to a university want to be the vice chancellor, the Chief registrar, the Bursar and all others in a city that is supposed to be universal? If we can’t achieve a national status anymore, how then do we achieve internationalisation? How do we consolidate on universality when professors who should set the tone for restoration of universe in the university are setting fire on the values that produced them? So we need to reset our mind on what we want: glorified grammar schools or universal city?
Doubtless, we need to wake up from lamentation syndrome and get our Visitors to the universities and this our Adekunle Ajasin University) to visit in peacetime when there is no convocation so that we can share information with them on how to internalise good policies and robust investment to get universe back to the universities so that we can be future ready, future relevant and future assured.
Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.