By Professor Emeritus Olawale Adetokunbo Ajayi
My dear Adesola,
I read your piece with a mixture of pain, nostalgia and professional concern. I have been in this system for decades – as a student in the analogue era of cyclostyle notes, as a lecturer when we typed with typewriters, as a Head of Department when internet came, and now as an emeritus watching my former students code from their bedrooms in Yaba and Berlin. So I understand your anger. It is valid. But as an elder in this house, let me offer you a more surgical diagnosis, not just a lamentation.
You are 70 per cent correct and 30 per cent incomplete. And that 30% is where the danger lies if we mislead our youth.
WHERE YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT
You have touched the raw nerve of our universities. I cannot defend what is indefensible.
1. Our curriculum delivery is indeed colonial in structure. We still run a 70 per cent theory, 30 per cent practical model when global standard since Bologna Process and NUC CCMAS are 40 per cent theory, 60 per cent skills.
2. Employability data supports you. National Bureau of Statistics reported youth underemployment at over 80 per cent for arts and humanities graduates. World Bank Human Capital Review ranked Nigeria among the lowest in graduate skill-match in Africa.
3. You are right about cheap courses. In many private universities, History, Political Science, Sociology cost almost zero to run – no lab, no studio, no farm – yet students pay huge sums per session. That is rent-seeking, not education.
I taught such a course in my early years. I am ashamed to say the note I used then was still being used by a colleague many years after. We failed that generation.
WHERE YOUR ARGUMENT NEEDS NUANCE – GLOBAL PRACTICE
My son, no course is inherently expired. It is the delivery that has expired.
Let me take you around the world:
In Harvard, Oxford, National University of Singapore – they still teach Philosophy, History, Classics, Sociology, Religious Studies. These are what you call dead courses. Yet their graduates are recruited by Google, McKinsey, UN, because those universities teach Philosophy with data logic, History with digital archiving, Sociology with SPSS, Python and field analytics.
A B.A. History graduate in University of Ibadan memorises dates of Oyo Empire. A B.A. History graduate in University of Cape Town learns the same Oyo Empire but uses GIS mapping, oral digital archiving, and documentary film to preserve it, and earns from Netflix and UNESCO. Same course, different destiny.
In Germany’s dual system, even a Literature student must spend months in a publishing house, media lab or translation tech company before graduation. In Nigeria’s CCMAS, we wrote the same – mandatory SIWES, entrepreneurship, and skills credits – but we don’t implement.
So the course has not expired. The lecturer has expired. The lab has expired. The management has expired.
To say we should scrap them is to throw away our heritage. What we should scrap is the method.
SWOT ANALYSIS OF YOUR ARTICLE – AS AN ACADEMIC PAPER
Strengths:
S – Strong emotional resonance with public pain. Bold, courageous voice that many Vice Chancellors fear. Timely intervention as NUC rolls out CCMAS. Connects education to economy – a rare thing. Language is accessible, not jargonised.
Weaknesses:
W – Overgeneralization. Painting all courses with same brush as expired. No distinction between curriculum content and curriculum delivery. No empirical sampling – you said 60 per cent expired, but no departmental audit cited. Prescribes abandonment rather than reform. Underestimates value of foundational humanities in nation building.
Opportunities:
O – You have opened a national conversation that can push NUC to enforce practical ratio. Can push TETFund to fund skill labs, not just buildings. Can force universities to publish employability rate per course annually – as UK does. Your piece can become a policy brief if backed with data.
Threats:
T – If taken literally by parents, students may despise foundational knowledge and rush to 6-month skills without critical thinking base. A coder without ethics, history and communication becomes a yahoo boy with laptop. An electrician without civic education cannot build a nation. Skills without citizenship breeds skilled criminals. Also, we risk creating a new caste system where children of the poor do POP and shoe making, while children of elite do tech and AI. Both need dignity.
ACTIONABLE AND WORKABLE ADVICE – FROM ONE WHO HAS SEEN BOTH ERAS
I will not tell you what NUC should do. They know. Let me tell you what WE must do:
1. For Universities – Adopt the Triple-Helix Model:
Every course must have three legs from Year Two – Classroom, Industry Hub, Community Problem. Mass Communication must run a campus radio that makes money. Sociology must run a data centre for local government. Theatre Arts must have a YouTube studio. If a department cannot show its money-making lab, its accreditation should be suspended. CCMAS already says this. Implement.
2. For Lecturers – Mandatory Re-tooling:
No lecturer should teach a course for more than three years without one industry immersion. NUC should make it policy: For every promotion, show one new skill certificate, one industry project, not just one journal paper. A professor who cannot use Turnitin, SPSS, Canva, or Learning Management System has no business teaching Gen Z.
3. For Students – Don’t Choose Between Degree and Skill, Combine:
The global practice now is T-shaped graduate. Deep in one discipline, broad in skills. Study Sociology and add Data Analytics certificate. Study History and add Documentary Filmmaking. Study English and add Copywriting and AI prompting. That is what makes you unstoppable. Four years is not waste if you use it to build both certificate AND capacity.
4. For Parents – Ask the Right Question:
Not “Can this course feed my child?” Ask, “Does this university teach this course with feeding skills?” Same course in Covenant can feed, same course in a mushroom university cannot.
5. For Government – Fund Value, Not Volume:
Stop funding universities per number of students. Start funding per number of patents, start-ups, and community solutions per department. Rwanda did it. Results came.
My dear Adesola, I commend your fire. We need your voice. But please, don’t tell our children that university is scam. Tell them that an unreformed university is scam. There is a difference.
We built this system. We must reform it, not burn it.
An uneducated mind with a skill can work. An educated mind with a skill can lead, innovate and transform a nation.
Let us choose the second.
Professor Emeritus Olawale Adetokunbo Ajayi, Professor of Human Capital and Comparative Education and Former Dean, Faculty of Education, Nigeria, United Kingdom & South Africa.
