How to improve Polytechnic-toindustry knowledge transfer - Rector
You were as rector ago, what achievements so far? We discovered that one of the major problems is office accommodation, so we started providing modern and comfortable office accommodation for lecturers in all ramifications and we started with the chief lecturers. If not for the delay in accessing our 2013 and 2014 TETFund, we would have gone far but before the end of the year, every lecturer should have a comfortable office accommodation. When they are comfortable in their offices, there will be maximum delivery.
We equally embarked on projects on expansion of teaching facilities, particularly lecture theatres and halls in all the campuses, we have new ones that are being constructed under my supervision.
The way government funds smaller polytechnics with maybe three departments is the way it funds Kaduna Polytechnic, which is about the size of six polytechnics put together especially the new ones. This means that we have to look for extra sources of funding. We have really been putting pressure on government to increase our funding particularly through TETFund. We are hoping that we will develop other means of getting money to run a big institution like ours.
Due to this challenge, I had to plead with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to assist polytechnics the way they do to universities. They agreed and the board of CBN approved N3.4billion in 2013 for us. At that time, they conducted field survey, we were invited twice to CBN Abuja office and they even placed advertisements on newspapers but I don’t know what happened along the line. I am therefore seizing this opportunity to call on the new CBN
appointed three years
are your Governor to accelerate the release of the funds for polytechnics. Six polytechnics from the six geopolitical zones had about N3.4 billion each to upgrade their status. Kaduna Polytechnic is targeting to have a centre of excellence for engineering, new laboratories, new theatres and Integrated ICT network.
On human development, Kaduna Polytechnic has sponsored over 64 staff for PhDs, about 92 for masters degree. We have continuously conducted training and upgrading our staff on ICT.
We pay attention to the welfare of our students; any student file that comes to my table is attended to within five minutes. When we went round to see the state of students’ hostels especially the toilets, we embarked on building new ones. We built two toilets each at the female and male hostels and dug boreholes according to what our internally generated revenue can accommodate. Of utmost importance is the policy on skills acquisition and entrepreneurial development for final year students. When I came in as the rector, I said, as a technically based institution, any student admitted into Kaduna Polytechnic should register for secondary skill training. The target of the training is that being an institution of technology, we should not be producing graduates that not only will carry certificates around seeking for jobs, they should essentially provide job for others, we discussed this extensively at the academic board and they approved it. If they don’t get job in the primary course they studied, they can set up their own businesses with the skills they learnt.
We also introduced academic Dr. Mohammed Bello Ibrahim is the Rector of Kaduna Polytechnic. In this interview, he talks on the effort made to ensure knowledge creation through Polytechnic-Industry collaborative research projects. whether they are needed in the market or not or whether they are demanded by the industries or not.
So, we have a collaboration with all the industries, we have written to practically all the industries in Kaduna State asking them to collaborate with us. The whole idea is, if these industries have suggestions or areas of critical need that they want our curriculum to capture, we are prepared; after all, the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) curriculum allows us to capture our local community needs. I encouraged that because we have to change the totality of the way the delivery system is, it has to be essentially demand driven and not supply driven and has to be based on what the market actually needs.
We also developed new programmes including railway technology. If you remember in those days, the railway was more or less like the NNPC of nowadays, so we are coming up with new programmes, we are the first institution and we have submitted them to NBTE. This new programme of railway technology should transform the way we conduct transport businesses in our cities and towns. This is also aimed at supporting the government in providing the manpower for the emergence of a competent railway transport system in Nigeria.
We have unbundled many departments and we have six new programmes including mechatronics, metallurgy, welding and fabrication, petroleum and natural gas processing and so on. quality assurance and linkages because one thing that is very important for a big institution like ours is to have a system of checking delivery so that we don’t run into problem of turning out students of low quality. We have appointed quality control officers in every department to ensure that the right standard is followed while students too, will be involved in assessing the quality of teaching and delivery by individual staff.
Another idea is restructuring our research strategy; an institution like ours should have direct linkage with the industries. Our programmes should essentially have linkages with the industry; curriculum in most developed nations is industry linked. I recently went to Brazil for World Bank workshop on skills, we discussed extensively and discovered that the difference between them and us is that their curriculum is essentially demand and industry driven while what we do here is essentially supply driven where we admit students and supply them into the labor market,