Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof Tunji Olaopa, has called for the scrapping of the Higher National Diploma (HND) awarded by polytechnics.
Olaopa made the call at a one-day national dialogue on ‘The Future of HND in the Nigerian Educational Landscape,’ organised by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) in Abuja yesterday.
He said if the lingering professional war between B.Sc./B.Tech. and HND degree holders must be resolved without totally rendering dysfunctional their originating mandates and purposes, then the recommendation of the Heads of Polytechnics and Colleges of Technology (COHEADS) in their 2007 memorandum to the then Presidential Technical Committee on the Consolidation of Tertiary Institutions must be revisited.
According to him, COHEADS recommends the conversion and upgrading of polytechnics into campuses of their proximate universities, while the largest polytechnics in each of the geo-political zones should be converted into full-fledged universities of technology.
“In so doing – and this for me is the game-changer – HND should be scrapped, while the National Diploma (ND) should be retained as a qualifying certificate for entrance into the new and old universities of technology and schools of technology affiliates of existing universities,” Olaopa said.
According to Olaopa, the newND-B.Tech. certification stream will benefit greatly from the German dual vocational training model “if benchmarked with action research adaptation to accommodate Nigeria’s peculiarities. The German dual-mode system integrates theory and practice, thinking and doing, systematic and work/factory-based practical classes. Here the costs (when fully institutionalised and functional) of the dual vocational training can be borne proportionately by government and the business community.”
