Mr Dele Ashiru has said faulted the belief that university education is tailored for employability, maintaining that graduates from the institutions are supposed to be employers of labour.
The Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Lagos State (UNILAG) chapter, made the comment on Friday during his appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
“There is a fundamental assumption that is wrong: university education is not for employability. That one is basic,” he said during the show. “If you have a good university education, you should be an employer of labour.”
According to him, access to university education is not for everybody, explaining that in developed nations; only a few people get to that level.
“If you look at systems all over the world, only a certain percentage of citizens in the country should be able to go to a university. The rest should go to what they call a polytechnic, a monotechnic, a technical college etc. such that by the time they finish from those institutions of learning, as it was in Nigeria in the past, they can move into the industry as artisans and all that,” the lecturer said.
For the ASUU UNILAG leader, the love for university education in the country is unnecessary; a situation he said does not bode well for Nigeria.
“And that’s why the pressure is on university education. Check any developed country in the world,” Mr Ashiru explained. “Those who populate their universities are not from their citizens.”
His comment comes amid the ongoing nationwide strike by ASUU. The lecturers are in the third week of a month-long industrial action to press home their demands.
Already, a series of meetings have been held between the union and the Federal Government’s delegation but ASUU is accusing the government of reneging on its agreement with them.
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