Final Report of Tracer Study Research Project on Higher Education and Work

Abstract

The importance of education to the national development project cannot be over-emphasised. Since the attainment of national independence in October, 1960, the successive Nigerian governments have acknowledged this fact with various measures of policy commitment and action. Even in electioneering campaigns and national budgets, politicians and policy makers alike have always recognised and politicised the centrality of good education especially, higher education to national development. Hence, they have frequently laid stress on the establishment of more universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, expansion of existing higher education institutions by creating multi-campus arrangements, provision of “adequate” infrastructural materials, more and well qualified teachers and so forth (Araromi & Adeyoju, 1996:83). In fact, it is sufficiently clear that a nation which fails to provide good education for her citizens would sooner or later face the logical antithesis of sustainable development: Mass illiteracy, obscurantism, superstitution, poverty, squalor, disease, de-industrialisation and low productivity. This mainly explains why governments are highly interested in the educational system particularly, in developing countries. To this end, the Federal Government declared in the preamble to the National Policy on Education of 1981 (the first clear-cut education policy in Nigeria) that: Education in Nigeria is no more a private enterprise, but a huge government venture that has witnessed a progressive evolution of government’s complete and dynamic intervention and active participation. The federal government of Nigeria has adopted education as an instrument par excellence for effecting national development. It is only natural that Government should clarify the philosophy and objectives that underlie its current massive investment in education and spell out in clear unequivocal terms the policies that guide Government’s educational effort. From the above preambles, it is clear that government recognises that for it to be quite meaningful, education has to be pertinently related to the national development agenda. This is further illustrated in the broad objectives of education in Nigeria formulated in the same National Policy of 1981. The objectives are the building of: i. a free and democratic society ii. a just and egalitarian society iii. a united, strong and self-reliant nation iv. a great and dynamic economy v. a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens. Although these objectives may sound too propagandistic, the emphasis on self-reliance and a dynamic economy has non-the-less recurred in all the economic policies and National Developments Plans in Nigeria since 1960 and therefore has to be viewed with a more serious concern. One of the key determinants of a self reliant and dynamic economy is the relatedness and probably responsiveness of the educational system, in particular, high education to developments in the manufacturing/industrial sector of the economy. It has been observed that the rapid liberalisation of the Nigerian economy which has introduced a wide variety of private initiatives, without a corresponding liberalisation of the educational system would in all probability activate only the growth of the former thereby exacerbating the gap between education and industry (Ukaegbu & Agunwamba, 1991). This study problematises the preceding observation, among others.