Conversion of polytechnics to award degrees ‘ll aid technological breakthrough
The President of Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), Malam Sulayman Ali, has said the upgrading of some polytechnics to degree awarding institutions would aid technological breakthrough.
Ali told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Auchi, Edo state, that the development would also attract the best brains to the sector.
He said upgrading polytechnics to a degree awarding status would also bring about parity between workers in the polytechnic sector and their counterparts in the university.
Ali said ``there is no gain saying that the review or reform in the education sector has been long overdue''.
He commended the federal government which, in spite of opposition, went ahead to undertake a review of moribund policies.
The ASUP leader said stakeholders in the polytechnic sector had been agitating that there was the need for this review.
He noted that this was because the sector represented the fulcrum around which technological education revolved.
``And if nothing is done about the polytechnic sector, if we want to move ahead with the rest of the world in this 21st century, we need to come to terms with our polytechnic education,'' he stressed.
Ali, who also said Nigeria was under-subscribed as far as tertiary education was concerned especially technological education, appealed to the government to ensure that the upgrading achieved desired expectation.
He said polytechnic education should be made to fit in as originally envisaged, like those in Britain, where polytechnics were supposed to gradually evolve into degree-awarding institutions with technological background.
He warned that converting polytechnics would not serve the country's technological purposes if it would only run as conventional universities.
Ali said a situation where undue emphasis was placed on MBA, or law or humanities degrees at the expense of technological know-how would be unfortunate.
He expressed the hope that the reform would attract the best brains such as professors of technologies, who would rather emphasise the issue of how you use your hands rather than theoretical researches.
He called on the government to always take the stakeholders into confidence, and expressed the optimism that the country was at the beginning of a long process of technological take-off.