The National Universities Commission, NUC’s 2009 deadline for doctorate degree as minimum qualification for teaching in our universities remains contentious. Any lecturer who could not earn his/her doctorate degree at that time will be shown the way out of the system. And the NUC sounds serious about enforcing this order. Some members of the university community see the directive as a welcome development.
At the same time, there are other people within and outside the university system who see it as a desirable step that would not easily be attainable. The directive may be impracticable.
There is no doubt that NUC as regulatory agency of government is expected to set minimum standards in staffing, programmes content and facilities. All these constitute requirements for accreditation.
However, a good idea or recommendation may be impossible to attain due to prevailing realities. For example, does the existing university law say that doctorate degree is the minimum teaching qualification? If yes, why the delay in implementation before now?
By 2009 would we have produced enough doctorate degree holders to service 25 federal universities, 27 state universities, 22 private universities, four inter-university centres and 26 research institutes?
Doctorate degree holders in the university system right now are only about 28,000. By 2009, all those institutions mentioned above would require about 100,000 doctorate degree holders. Can we produce that number of doctorate degree holders between now and 2009?
We should consider the fact that the university system has experienced profound brain drain over the past ten years or more. Where are the professors that would train this high number of doctorate degree holders?
Would it not be better to look at the existing programmes, staff strength and facilities and adopt a gradual approach to the implementation of the directive?
As lawyers say a law that can not be enforced is as good as dead. A directive that is impracticable would become inactive. What may eventually happen is that universities will still have master’s degree holders on their staff list, as lecturers, even after 2009.
It is not a PhD that makes a good lecturer. It is convenient to forget that some of our best professors do not have PhDs. Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe are great examples. Have their mates with PhDs produced better students?
The rationale for this directive is not clear. There is no indication that a doctorate degree holder would make a better lecturer than one without that qualification. If what the NUC is looking for is improvement in the quality of university teachers, academic qualifications would not be enough. The teaching conditions are inadequate to produce the number of quality teachers to man the positions in the universities. Poor conditions of service have robbed the universities of the first shot at keeping their best students.
A country that does not take the welfare of its teachers serious cannot turn around to impose qualifications for those teachers, who are barely available, and in great demand elsewhere.
