Don seeks better conditions of service for PhD holders in Nigerian universities

Ibadan – A don, Dr Oluwatosin Adeniyi, has advocated for better conditions of service to retain the best and the brightest doctorate degree holders in the universities across the country.

Adeniyi, of the Department of Economics, University of Ibadan, stated this in a virtual seminar, entitled “PhD Thesis Writing in Economics or Finance”, held in Ibadan on Sunday.

According to her, there is a huge deficit of PhD holders who can supervise doctoral students in Nigerian universities, owing to the conditions of service that are not favourable to them and in tandem with the present economic reality.

“More importantly, as the government works in partnership with all stakeholders to fill this lacuna, urgent attention needs to be paid to the conditions of service of the thousands of PhD holders who are working tirelessly to enhance both teaching and research capacities in the universities.

“This is because hiring PhD holders is one thing but building system-wide mechanisms for their retention is by far more important.

“As long as academic salaries remain relatively low and the infrastructure to support teaching and research activities in comatose, retaining the best and the brightest within Nigeria may be a pipe dream,” the don said.

Adeniyi said PhD holders were already burdened with supervision, adding that working to sustain teaching and research was not encouraging.

She noted that most universities in the country had dearth of PhD holders with specialisation in such disciplines as Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Science, Law and Architecture, among others.

The don stated that the substantial gap in the proportions of doctorate degree holders needed for certain courses accounted for why many universities were facing accreditation problems for their courses.

According to her, the deficit, coupled with the lower number of women with doctorate degrees partly accounts for the low levels of socio-economic and political development of the country.

“All over the world, higher education system is recognised as a major contributor to national development.

“In most advanced countries, substantial portions of national budgets are allocated to the education sector in order to facilitate teaching and research activities in universities and other research-based institutions.

“PhD programmes represent the highest echelon of academic training and the global distribution of graduates from doctoral programmes is a mirror of the disparities in the levels of economic, political and social development across countries.

“In other words, North America, Western Europe and other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries outside these two regions have a disproportionately higher number of PhD holders.

“For the developing world however, countries like China, India and South Africa are the only comparators, albeit at the lower end of the spectrum,” she said.

Adeniyi noted deficiencies in the number of PhD holders and gender bias attained more troubling status as far as the Nigerian academic system was concerned.

“The gender bias against women is also a reality that requires scrutiny and needs structural reforms,” Adeniyi said. (NAN)