- …say population of admission seekers has increased
Some dons in the country have lent their voices to the call on the National Universities Commission to approve more private universities, to cope with the country’s teeming population of students.
In giving their support for the establishment of more private universities, the lecturers said that Nigeria has only 153 universities, which are insufficient to cope with over 15 million admission-worthy student population.
The NUC recently said it was processing over 200 applications for new private universities in the country.
The Executive Secretary of the Commission, Abubakar Rasheed, who made this known during a meeting with federal universities’ bursars in Abuja, noted that the university system in the country was growing and that private universities as well as federal and state universities could no longer cope with the large numbers of yearly applications for admission.
A professor of Mass Communication, Delta State University, Prof. Ezekiel Asemah, noted that the plan by the Federal Government to approve the establishment of more private universities was a good development, citing the growing number of applicants seeking admission yearly, with a few people gaining admission at the end of the day.
He added that with more universities in place, thousands of applicants would be off the streets and social vices in the society would be reduced to the barest minimum.
“Thousands of people apply to universities and at the end, they don’t get admission. So I think it is a step in the right direction, because the population is high; many people want to be educated,” he said.
He opined that although not all private schools had an acceptable standard of education, there were still some that had the requiredstandard, adding that even for the public ones, not all of them had high standards.
“So, we have some private universities that are up to standard, just the same way we have public universities that are up to standard,” he said.
Similarly, Christine Ikpeme, a professor at the University of Calabar, noted that the idea of more private universities was good, but that they should be better regulated.
“Some private universities engage in sharp practices whereby they ‘rent’ lecturers from other institutions during accreditation processes. This is not ideal. NUC does not pay unscheduled visits to these universities; so it is easy for them to get away with such practices,” Ikpeme said.
Rasheed earlier said that the future of higher education in the country lay with how the private universities were managed. He said private universities should be able to fill the gap created by insufficient universities.
“NUC is concerned about the sanctity, quality, and integrity of degrees acquired by the students,” he added.
The NUC recently approved the 153rd university known as the Moshood Abiola University of Technology, Abeokuta, Ogun
State.
