My dear Adesola,
I read Mr. Adesola Adefemi Ojuolape’s article titled “Most Courses in Nigeria’s Universities Have Expired” 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 cyclostyled notes, as a lecturer when we typed with typewriters, as a Head of Department when the internet arrived, 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% correct and 30% 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% theory, 30% practical model when the global standard since the Bologna Process and the NUC CCMAS is 40% theory, 60% skills.
2. Employability data supports you. The National Bureau of Statistics reported youth underemployment at over 80% for arts and humanities graduates. The 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, and Sociology cost almost nothing 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 notes I used then were 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:
At Harvard, Oxford, and the National University of Singapore】, they still teach Philosophy, History, Classics, Sociology, and Religious Studies. These are what you call dead courses. Yet their graduates are recruited by Google, McKinsey, and the UN because those universities teach Philosophy with data logic, History with digital archiving, and Sociology with SPSS, Python, and field analytics.
A B.A. History graduate at the University of Ibadan memorizes dates of the Oyo Empire. A B.A. History graduate at the University of Cape Town learns about the same Oyo Empire but uses GIS mapping, oral digital archiving, and documentary filmmaking 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 it.
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 the same brush as expired. No distinction between curriculum content and curriculum delivery. No empirical sampling – you said 60% have expired, but no departmental audit was cited. Prescribes abandonment rather than reform. Underestimates the value of foundational humanities in nation-building.
Opportunities:
O – You have opened a national conversation that can push NUC to enforce the practical-to-theory ratio. Can push TETFund to fund skill labs, not just buildings. Can force universities to publish employability rates per course annually – as the 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 six-month skills without a critical-thinking base. A coder without ethics, history, and communication becomes a yahoo boy with a laptop. An electrician without civic education cannot build a nation. Skills without citizenship breed skilled criminals. Also, we risk creating a new caste system where children of the poor do POP and shoemaking, while children of the 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, and 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 it.
2. For Lecturers – Mandatory Retooling:
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 and one industry project, not just one journal paper. A professor who cannot use Turnitin, SPSS, Canva, or a 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 the T-shaped graduate. Deep in one discipline, broad in skills. Study Sociology and add a 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 a 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?” The same course in Covenant can feed; the 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 a scam. Tell them that an unreformed university is a 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 is a Professor of Human Capital and Comparative Education and Former Dean, Faculty of Education in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and South Africa
