ASUU IS A PATRIOTIC UNION: THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD MEET ITS DEMANDS INTRODUCTION “The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a center of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, and adjustment which forms the secret of civilization”. – W.E.B. DU BOIS. The university is an institution where the highest academic qualification can be obtained. It is also an institution that is supposed to prepare graduates for the professional needs of a complex and technological society. Although Nigerian universities are producing graduates in large numbers in sciences, engineering and technology, they are not prepared for the professional needs of a complex and technological society due to lack of standard laboratories, lack of good libraries, lack of good instructional materials, poor university funding among others. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is a patriotic union that wants the growth of Nigeria not only educationally but economically and otherwise. But since most Nigerian leaders are unpatriotic to Nigeria, they don’t care about what happens to Nigerian education. Because of avarice, most of them are hankering for a wealthy lifestyle and have partially or completely turned their back on Nigerian education and other sectors. ASUU is not only fighting for the university system to be revitalized but also other institutions of learning. Once the universities in Nigeria are well equipped and improved upon, other institutions of learning will also be taken care of so that academic achievements will be great in Nigeria and will have potent impact on the nation and the entire world. ASUU AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASUU had gone on many strikes in the past but such strikes did little to move the Federal government into action. When the ASUU challenged came up, the Federal Ministry of Education (FME), again, did not handle matters in a coordinated way. The university teachers have been having issues with the federal government since 1992, and the former minister of Education, Ruqqayat Rufai was not the first Minister to have been confronted with the challenge. But when a largely uncoordinated FME team decided to take up issues with a highly experienced ASUU side, it became clear that a stalemate would occur. It is painful to note that over the years, the education sector has been characterized by endless strikes without any hope of addressing the inherent problems even when the country has what it takes to put things right. The former president of ASUU, Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie in June, 2009 said that the Federal Government’s lack of seriousness forced the strike option on the dons. According to him, in December, 2006, the Federal Ministry of Education inaugurated the FGN/ASUU Re-negotiation team, chaired by Mr. Gamaliel Onosode, with a single term of reference of re-negotiating the 2001 FGN/ASUU Agreement. The 2001 agreement dwelt on increased funding of the university sector, university autonomy and academic freedom, 70 years retirement age for academic staff, as well as salaries and conditions of service. Shortly after the three-month industrial action embarked upon by ASUU was suspended, Awuzie warned the Federal Government to avoid any action and situation that are capable of destroying the existing harmony among the unions on the campuses and affecting the attainment of vision 2020. He made it clear that if Nigerian university system is not revitalized by the Federal Government, it will be impossible for Nigeria to become a great nation without it. President Jonathan and Vice President Sambo are university graduates and I am very surprised that they refused to take education as one of their top priorities. They need to revitalize our education system because without education, Nigeria’s Transformation Agenda will not be achieved and will be rebranded as something else because there is no country that can be a great nation without standard education. If they think that there are shortcuts to being a great nation, then they must be day-dreaming. The president of ASUU, Dr. Nasir Isa Fagge has made it clear to the Federal Government that ASUU is patriotic to Nigeria because it knows that without standard education, Nigeria’s anticipated greatness will be far-fetched so it wants the leaders to put things right to make most Nigerian students to be competitive internationally and more productive. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD LEARN FROM AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL PAST There are a lot of things the Federal Government needs to learn from countries that used education to become super powers today. And one of such countries is the United States of America. These facts will make FG to understand why ASUU wants the university system and Nigerian Education at large to be revitalized. The years from 1870 to the beginning of World War I in 1914 saw the United States transformed from a predominantly agricultural to an industrial society. America’s industrialization generated momentous alterations in the national character and economy and in the nation’s social and educational institutions. The federal, state, and local governments used education to encourage industrialization. During the prosperity of the 1920s, government, education, and society in general encouraged individual initiative and action. The role of education was to prepare the agents of the new prosperity: the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders of the new economic order. Education administration, in particular, modeled itself along business and corporate lines. For many school administrators, schools were to run as effectively and efficiently as business. The history of American higher education reveals a continuous interaction between transplanted European concepts and the American environment. The modern American university resulted from the imposition of the German graduate school upon the four-year undergraduate college. German universities such as Berlin, Halle, Gottingen, Bonn, and Munich, with their emphasis on Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit, freedom to teach and freedom to learn, exercised a great influence on American higher education. For example, university presidents such as Daniel Coit Grilman of Johns Hopkis and Charles W. Eliot of Harvard worked to transform their institutions into centres of graduate study and research. At the John Hopkins University, founded in Baltimore in 1876, instruction was modeled along the lines of German university as distinguished scholars conducted research seminars for graduate students. The methods of John Hopkins were followed by the graduate schools of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Chicago. Thus, the German emphasis on scholarship and research came to dominate the American university, as distinguished professors devoted themselves to the pursuit of truth and the advancement of knowledge. By the end of the nineteenth century, the American university reached its basic definition as it came to encompass the undergraduate college of liberal arts and sciences, the graduate college, and the professional colleges of law, medicine, education, agriculture, engineering, nursing, social work, theology, dentistry, commerce, and other specialised areas. The career of Charles Eliot, Harvard’s president from 1869 to 1909, reveals his efforts to modernize higher education as he transformed Harvard University from a classically oriented institution into one that prepared its graduates for the professional needs of a complex and technological society. A Harvard graduate, Eliot had studied the classics, mathematics, and chemistry. While touring Europe in 1863, Eliot visited French and German universities and polytechnical institutes. Returning to the United States, Eliot recommended that some selected aspects of European institutions be incorporated into American universities. While he believed that some European innovations would be useful, he steadfastly argued that the American university should meet the unique needs of the United States, a nation that was changing from a rural-agrarian to a rapidly modernizing technological society. During the forty years that he was Harvard’s President, Eliot’s leadership helped to modernize not only his own university but American higher education as well. Historically, American college and university presidents had been recruited from the ranks of distinguished clergymen who conducted their presidencies in a ministerial or paternalistic fashion. In contrast, Eliot believed that the modernization of universities required a concept of the presidency that was both executive and managerial. In fact, Eliot saw his role to be that of managing a highly incorporated undergraduate, graduate, and professional education. As Harvard’s president, he worked for greater efficiency, higher standards, and greater student freedom of choice. As a firm proponent of articulation between educational institutions, he worked to end the ivory tower isolation of higher education from elementary and secondary schools. If the Federal Government wants Nigeria to be a great nation, then it must approve adequate funds for modernization of Nigerian institutions of learning. Funds should be made available for most lecturers and other educators to further their education or conduct research abroad or study the school systems of all the countries that are world powers today and recommend areas that should be incorporated in Nigerian universities, colleges, secondary and elementary schools. The Federal Government should also provide funds that will create an environment that will accommodate the aspects to be incorporated. Nigerian university system and other educational systems need complete transformation especially in science, engineering and technology. ASUU wants complete transformation of the university system because it is a patriotic union that knows that university is the bedrock of knowledge and development. In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched a space satellite, Sputnik, into orbit around the earth. The initial American reaction to Sputnik was a skeptical disbelief that the supposedly technologically backward Soviets could have beaten the United States in the race into space. This initial reaction led to a public search for the internal weaknesses that had caused the United States to lose its hitherto unquestioned scientific and technological superiority over the Soviet Union. Although critics such as Bestor, Rafferty, and Rickover had been condemning the U.S. public school’s academic softness since the early 1950s, Sputnik stimulated widespread demands for more rigorous academic standards and programmes. Sputnik broadened the debate over the quality and condition of American public education that had been going on since the early 1950s. In the broadened context of Sputnik, the discussion of American education, in professional as well as public circles, turned to priorities. If the United States were to meet the Soviet challenge, then it had to improve its scientific, engineering, and technological capabilities. There was a return to more rigorous academic subject matter; the emerging priorities also had a quantitative dimension in that more funds were to be expended to prepare more teachers for classrooms. The Sputnik era also anticipated the educational criticisms and reforms of the 1980s. As the 1950s neared their end, the long-standing debate over federal aid to education was interrupted by fears that the United States was losing its scientific, technological, and educational superiority to the Soviet Union. The Soviet success in orbiting Sputnik and well-publicized American space failures at that time produced a mood of national crisis that “something was wrong with American schools”. Although grossly exaggerated by Cold War fears, this climate of opinion brought contentious factions together in congress to enact the National Defence Education Act (NDEA) in 1958. The NDEA rested on two premises: first, national security required the “fullest development of the mental resources and technical skills” of American youth. And second, the national interest required federal “assistance to education for programmes which are important to America’s national defence”. The NDEA also provided grants to the states to improve secondary school guidance and counseling programmes. John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, a year when Cold War tensions remained high. In his State-Of-The-Union Address on January 30, 1961, Kennedy called for legislation to provide federal funding for public schools, higher education, basic research, and medical training. This was followed by his “Special Message to Congress on Education” in February, which outlined specific proposals for education, such as: 1. federal assistance for elementary and secondary school construction and raising teachers’ salaries; 2. federal loans to colleges and universities to construct student housing; 3. a programme to encourage scholarships for talented and needy college students; 4. appointment of a commission to recommend improvements in vocational education. In his educational message of 1962, President Kennedy advised Congress that significant advances in the discovery and transmission of knowledge needed to be translated into the school curriculum. While the institutes of the National Science Foundation and the Office of Education had helped to keep teachers up-to-date, Kennedy believed that the opportunities for attending these institutes were two limited. He also urged efforts to raise standards in teacher education programmes. The president stated that: “… the key to educational quality is the teaching profession. About one out of every five of the nearly 1,600,000 teachers in our elementary and secondary schools fail to meet full certification standards for teaching or has not completed four years of college work. Our immediate concern should be to afford them every possible opportunity to improve their professional skills and their command of the subjects they teach”. On January 23, 1963, Kennedy expressed his commitment to aid higher education when he said: “Now a veritable tidal wave of students is advancing inexorably on our institutions of higher education, where the annual costs per student are several times as high as the cost of a high school education, and where these costs must be borne in large part by the student or his parents. Five years ago the graduating class of the secondary schools was 1.5 million; five years from now it will be 2.5 million. The future of these young people and nation rests in large part of their access to college and graduate education. For this country Founding Fathers called “an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity”. The phrase “a democracy of opportunity” demonstrated Kennedy’s determination to provide greater access to higher education for more students. His use of the term “an aristocracy of intellect” reflected his resolution that, although enrollments were increasing, American higher education would maintain its standards of excellence. Under the auspices of the Kennedy administration, the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 was passed. In focusing attention on the need for expanded facilities, President Kennedy stated: “The long-predicted crisis in higher education facilities is now at hand. For the next fifteen years, even without additional student aid, enrollment increases in colleges will average 340,000 each year. If we are to accommodate the projected enrollment of more than 7 million college students by 1970 – a doubling during the decade - $23 billion of new facilities will be needed, more than three times the quantity built during the preceding decade. This means that unless we are to deny higher education opportunities to our youth, American colleges and universities must expand their academic facilities at a rate much faster than their present resources will permit”. The Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 provided grants to colleges and universities to construct buildings, laboratories, libraries and other facilities. The act made private and church-related as well as public institutions eligible for federal aid. However, facilities constructed in church related institutions were limited to those being used for instruction or research in the natural or physical sciences, mathematics, modern foreign languages, engineering, library use, or other secular areas. The Higher Education Act of 1962, enacted during the Johnson administration, provided federal funding for community service and continuing education programmes, college libraries and library training and research, developing institutions, and student assistance. It offered grants to qualified high school graduates the exceptional financial need who could not afford to attend a college or university. After his landslide victory over Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, in the election of 1964, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who wanted to be known as the “education president” moved to get general Federal aid to education legislation enacted by Congress since 1945 efforts at general Federal aid to education had failed in Congress. Johnson was successful in getting congress to enact the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), an aid bill that provided more than $1 billion in federal funds to assist schools. Although still categorical, ESEA was broad in scope. As part of Johnson’s War on poverty, the major thrust of the ESEA sought to equalize educational opportunities, especially in inner-city and rural poverty areas. The Federal Government needs to comprehensively understand that standard education is what has made the United States the world’s most political and industrial world power and has given it the reputation it has today. When Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, the U.S. did rigorous reforms in its education system which made it to have the first and second men (Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin) to land on the moon, on July 20, 1969, including other inventions. BEST FIVE UNIVERSITIES IN NIGERIA AND CRITERIA FOR RATING BEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD It is unfortunate that none of the six best universities in Nigeria are among the five hundred best universities in the world. These six best universities in Nigeria are: (Best universities in Nigeria 2013 by Nigerian Universities Commission Ranking) 1. University of Ibadan 2. University of Lagos 3. University of Benin 4. Obafemi Awolowo University 5. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. 6. University of Ilorin Some of the criteria used for rating best universities in the world are: 1. Reputation 2. Competitiveness 3. Admission criteria 4. Research 5. The nature of instructional materials 6. The contribution to development 7. The nature of laboratories, among others. From the above criteria, it is patently clear to me that the Federal and State Governments have a tremendous work to do especially in the area of research because it is through research that new discoveries are made. And all Nigerian universities do not have good facilities that would have enabled lecturers and students to embark on numerous research works that could have national and international impact. RESEARCH IS A UNIVERSITY FUNCTION A university is a community of scholars in which teaching and research are bound together by a common core of scholarship. Research is valuable for its results, for its capacity to vivify university teaching, and for the way it instills a receptive attitude to university. Research which is neither the poor nor the wealthy relative of teaching, nor its rival, must be associated with it as much as possible for their mutual profit. The university is a social institution dedicated to teaching, research and public service. Other institutions may engage in one of the other of these pursuits, but it is the university that is uniquely charged with the simultaneous performance of all three. These university functions may be separable in principle, but in practice they merge in a complex and intricate fashion. Research is indispensable to teaching through its contribution both to the intellectual development of faculty and graduate students, and to the creative environment essential for effective undergraduate instruction. Also, research is critical to the acquisition of new knowledge and to the achievement of high standards of academic excellence, which together constitute the foundation of a university’s public service. A research must stand for advancement of knowledge through scholarly, scientific and creative activity. In Nigeria, professors, lecturers and students are supposed to engage in research as an essential academic responsibility but there are no standard research facilities that should be managed by university lecturers. To ensure that a comprehensive research programme can be made and maintained at a level that should make potent impact, faculty teaching assignments should be designed to afford the necessary time. The policies of support departments and services should accommodate research needs as well as the instructional programme. Research space, supplies, equipment and facilities should be considered during formulation of operating estimates, academic development and physical planning. But the Federal Government doesn’t want to approve adequate funds for these to be achievable. The induction of students into the spirit of free enquiry and the critical interpretation of ideas is supposed to be a central theme of all universities in Nigeria. For graduate students, this education should take the form of advanced research under the guidance and supervision of skilled and accomplished members of the faculty. All Nigerian universities are supposed to make a policy for capable undergraduate students to explore the frontier of knowledge. The opportunity and financial support for such activity should be provided by the federal government through the instructional programmes of the faculties by such mechanisms as independent studies, applied studies, multi-disciplinary programming. These are some of the reasons ASUU is fighting for. FINDINGS ON THE NATURE OF NIGERIAN EDUCATION Before ASUU embarked on its ongoing strike, I did a thorough research on Nigerian Education and the following were my findings: 1. Academic standards and levels of achievement had declined in Nigerian schools. 2. Most politicians and affluent Nigerians have confused and distorted the purpose of the school. Whereas the school’s primary function is academic, anti-intellectual forces have made it a confused multipurpose agency. As a result, the public, parents, students, teachers, and administrators no longer have a clear concept of the school’s purpose and function. 3. When compared with the school systems of other countries, especially those of the United States, Europe and Asia, Nigerian schools and students are academically inferior. This unfortunate result is due to the fact that many U.S. and European systems have national standards and institutional tracks based on students’ academic abilities. 4. The entries of fundamentalist religious and culturally relative values into the schools have weakened the inherited and traditional civic, patriotic, and moral values. 5. The use of social promotion, and the neglect of rigorous academic standards have caused a deterioration in the quality of Nigerian education. 6. Schools have done little to correct the general decline in the fundamental moral, ethical, and civic values that is taking place in Nigeria. 7. The quality of instruction has deteriorated because of the employment of poorly prepared teachers. 8. Nigerian schools have become overly bureaucratic and expensive. 9. Problems in student achievement, such as inadequate reading, writing, comprehension, and mathematics skills. 10. Serious educational deficits in mathematics and science, the specific areas most closely related to technological progress, manifested by “a lack of general scientific and mathematical literacy” and by projected shortages of skilled scientists and engineers; this educational deficit is aggravated by poor funding. 11. A “teacher gap”, resulting in a shortage of “qualified teachers in critical subjects” such as mathematics and science. 12. A low salary scale, in which teachers are paid according to “rigid salary structures” rather than a “system for rewarding exceptional teachers for their superior performance. GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS After the above findings were made, the following general recommendations have been made for the Federal Government, ASUU, and Nigerian educators: 1. The Federal Government should fund schools to create broad and effective partnership, especially with business leaders, to improve schools. Such projected “partnerships between business and schools will: i. encourage business leaders to share “their expertise in planning, budgeting, and management with school administrators; ii. customize job-training efforts between business and schools; iii. train students and teachers in the skills, techniques, and equipment actually used in businesses. 2. Too many schools underestimate their students’ potential; they need to respect their students by raising their expectations and standards of accountability. 3. Schools, colleges, and universities should adopt more rigorous and measurable standards, and higher expectations, for academic performance and student conduct, and they should raise their requirements for admission. This will help students do their best educationally with challenging materials in an environment that supports learning and authentic accomplishment. 4. The standards for admission to teacher education programmes be raised and that prospective teachers demonstrate aptitude for teaching and competence in an academic discipline. 5. Teachers’ salaries should be raised but that increases be based on effective evaluation of performance. 6. The Federal Government should be as a stimulator and encourager of education and as a disseminator of information education and as a source of federal funding. 7. Teacher preparation programmes should be improved by modifying the present programmes used by schools for education. 8. The conditions for learning should be improved by employing more teachers, reducing class size and improving the quality of educational materials. 9. Talented teachers should be attracted and retained by “competitive entry-level salaries” and “rewards for competence” and do not “selectively raise the pay for a few teachers at the expense of many”. 10. The traditional role of teachers should be transformed by including them “in decision-making about teaching and learning and reduce their non-instructional tasks. 11. Constructive and comprehensive teacher evaluation system should be established or existing ones should be modified to be constructive and comprehensive. 12. The Federal Government should fund the creation of more opportunities for professional growth and development designed by professional educators. 13. The Federal Government should approve funds to improve teacher education programmes according to standards that teachers “believe are basic to success in the classroom”. 14. The Federal Government should assign higher budget priority to educational improvement and make certain that existing resources are used more effectively and efficiently, to improve educational quality. 15. The Federal Government should fund boards of education to provide “quality assurance in education” by establishing objective systems to measure and reward teacher effectiveness and performance. While quality assurance evaluation should reward effective teachers, it should also lead to the dismissal of those judged ineffective. CONCLUSION Although an agreement was later signed in October, 2009 between the Federal Government and ASUU after ASUU suspended its three-month strike that began in June and ended October 2009, it should still be clearly understood by the Federal Government that ASUU reserves the right to still make more demands in future if situations require. Just like Thomas Jefferson once said: “for republican institutions to function progressively, they had to be continually modified”. The Federal Government should understand that for Nigerian Education to make potent impact on the lives of the citizens and the international community, it must be continually modified because the present tools, instructional materials, laboratories, libraries, classrooms and other things associated with education that are in use now may be required to be modified in the next two or five years including conditions of service. It is as a result of the continuous modifications of American Education that has made American higher institutions most of the best in the world and the institutions have contributed to the greatness of America as well. Although the Federal Government is to blame for the poor education in Nigerian institutions, most ASUU members and most Nigerian Educators have also failed to play their fundamental roles effectively. ASUU should also try as much as possible to carryout their fundamental roles effectively in their institutions: 1. Lecturers should lecture students according to the lecture time table and even organise tutorials if need be. 2. Lecturers should be friendly with students during and after lectures because being unnecessarily hard on students and making them to suffer academically can affect the mental development of students and retard their academic achievements. 3. Lecturers should not collect money from students to give them the grades they didn’t merit. This has also contributed to the high level of incompetent graduates. 4. Lecturers should not transfer their aggression with other people on their students. 5. Lecturers should motivate their students to achieve academically by rewarding exceptionally brilliant students for their superior performance. 6. Lecturers should instill discipline in students and curb unruly passions and make academics more interesting. If the federal government, ASUU and other Nigerian Educators will work in harmony and be more patriotic to Nigeria, Nigerian institutions and students will be competitive internationally and more productive and these will also help Nigeria to grow economically in areas that require the knowledge obtained from Nigerian institutions of learning. Industrialization can only be sustained if quality education is put in place because the skills and knowledge needed in industries can only be obtained if certain facilities and skilled personnel are put in place. It is my sincere desire as a patriotic Nigerian that the Federal Government should do all it takes to propel Nigeria from dark ages to golden ages by modernizing our institutions of learning, improving the condition of living of the citizenry, managing the available resources more effectively and those in charge of project funds should stop siphoning them but use them for the purposes which they were budgeted for. God bless Nigeria.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 09:33:52 +0000
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