Education: '57 Percent of Nigerian University Lecturers Have No PHDs'

8 August, 2012

 

20,520 of the 36,000 lecturers in 61 public universities in Nigeria (which is about 57%), have no PhDs. This is crippling the quality of manpower in the system, Professor Mahmmod Yakubu, Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), has said.

 

Yakubu, who spoke in Abuja yesterday at a meeting for heads of tertiary institutions, indicated a disproportionate number of students registered for undergraduate studies.

 

He said 85% of students were enrolled for undergraduate studies, 5% sub-degree, 5% for postgraduate for diploma, 3% for postgraduate masters and only 2% PhD candidates.

 

The Federal Government had recently appealed to first generation universities to concentrate more on postgraduate studies to fill the dearth of quality manpower.

 

The University of Ilorin, which now has a 60/40% ratio in favour of postgraduate studies, and the University of Ibadan are the only universities in compliance.

 

In July, when the National Universities Commission (NUC) presented the benchmark minimum academic standards for Postgraduate Programmes, Education Minister Professor Ruqayyatu Rufai directed the commission to seek funding from TETfund to conduct a staff and student audit of all public universities in Nigeria to verify the number of shortfall of lecturers in the system.

 

The last verification exercise conducted by NUC was in 2007, where it was revealed that tertiary institutions have a shortfall of 61,738 academic staff especially in the areas of science and technology.