Experts rue prevalence of unaccredited courses in public universities

Education administration experts have blamed the existence of unaccredited courses in universities on underfunding of education by government, noting that majority of the universities whose academic programmes failed to scale through National Universities Commission (NUC) accreditation process are from public institutions.

A breakdown of the 37 affected universities, showed that government owned institutions carry a larger chunk of 29, with federal universities accounting for 13, while state and private universities had 16 and eight respectively.

Also, a further breakdown indicated that out of the 150 unaccredited programmes, government owned universities recorded 136, while private universities had 14 courses unaccredited.

Commenting on the development, a professor of Education Administration, Ebelechukwu Onyene, explained that since education is underfunded in Nigeria, there cannot be adequate resources, thus making managers of the universities to try breaking coconut with bare hands.

She noted that Nigeria has not realised that ignoring education was doing the nation a lot of harm, adding, “Even the corruption level in Nigeria is because of the problem in the education system, caused by underfunding.”

On his part, Professor Philips Okunola, an education administration expert, said majority of the institutions that had courses that did not scale through accreditation are public universities, maintaining that it is as a result of failure on the part of government.

As education is underfunded by government, he said, whether at federal or state levels, none is meeting the UNESCO benchmark for minimum funding, while some other countries on the continent had raised theirs to about 30 percent of their annual budget.

While arguing that there is no reason for any university’s courses to be unaccredited if resources are adequately mobilised for those programs, Okunola stated: “In public universities, some of them are just coming up, and the state government might find it difficult to give adequate financial support, especially state universities, so the administrators of these universities find it difficult to meet the financial backing that is needed for the smooth running of the universities.”