The Precious Cornerstone University, Ibadan, is a faith-based institution owned by the Sword of the Spirit Ministries. In this interview, its pioneer vice chancellor, Professor Julius Kola Oloke, shares with LAOLU HAROLDS the uniqueness of the university’s programme offering, as well as his plan as the pioneer chief executive.
There are close to 80 private universities in Nigeria today, including faith-based institutions. What difference has the Precious Cornerstone University come to make?
It is the dream of the presiding bishop of the Sword of the Spirit Ministries, who is the chancellor of PCU, Bishop Francis Wale Oke, to set up a world class university. He has travelled to different parts of the world and has seen how things are done in the different countries of the world; and it is a great burden on his heart that we should give adequate training to our students so that they will become employers of labour. So, in Precious Cornerstone University, we have well trained faculty who are able to model the students appropriately, to impart the skills that are needed for entrepreneurship. Even before our students graduate, we anticipate that many of them will be able to set up their own businesses.
Most importantly, we also structure our curricula in a way that many of the students that are studying some professional courses like Accounting, before they graduate, could become chartered accountants before they finish their training in the university. Also, for many of them that are doing Computer Science, we give them opportunity to be able to do different professional examinations like CISCO, which will make them to be able to fit in into the industry. And since we are faith-based university, we develop the spiritual life of our students, so that they will be able to handle issues of life very maturely – and we have been having a lot of testimonies.
How much interest is being shown in this university by way of admission requests? How many students did you have at takeoff, and how many do you have now?
For the takeoff, for the 100 level that we have just completed, we had about 90 students; and we have students from 21 states of Nigeria. That would tell you that, indeed, Precious Cornerstone University is the university to reckon with. And God is helping us; on a daily basis, we have students coming in and registering for our programmes.
What is the position of PCU on non-Christian candidates who may want to come to this place for their studies?
We are not discriminating. Those people that are non-Christians, as long as they are not going to cause any problem of us, are allowed to come in. As long as they will obey our rules and regulations [they are welcome]. We have some people who are of the other religion in the university already.
What plan does the management have to assist those students who may find it difficult to cope with the fees and want to attend this university?
Our school fee is about the lowest in this part of the country; and it is possible for students to pay in four installments. We have scholarship programme in our university. We have what we call Promoter’s Scholarship.
Is there any form of students’ representative body, and how much freedom do they have?
We allow students to come together to form different associations, but there is a minimum CGPA that the students must have before they can become leaders of the students. This is to make room for order, so that things can be done well.
Today we have faith-based universities all over the place, yet cultism and other social vices are still a problem, even in some faith-based institutions. What do you think is responsible, and what can be done about it?
What we have in the different institutions is a reflection of the bigger society. In the society at large, because of pressures and tension, you have several people going to drugs and getting involved in cultism. It is the reflection of this that we have in the different institutions. But we thank God that in our university, we have different Christian groups that come in to train our students to be of good behaviour, and we try to assist those of them that have challenges in different areas on how they can overcome such challenges. We show them how the scriptures can liberate them from the different problems they have – and it has been working. For some, we arrange rehabilitation programmes, and the word of God is changing them.
The reason private universities came on board was to be part of the solution to the problem of inadequate access to tertiary education. Almost 20 years after, we cannot really say they have solved this problem. The private universities in the country altogether still represent the least percentage of admission requests to universities
It is true, but that is when you look at the problem of access on the basis of quantity. When you look on the basis of quality, you will discover that private universities are really making waves. Many of the students that graduate from private universities are always different from those that attend public university – at least I can see that in some of them that have come to PCU to do national youth service. In terms of quality, you discover that private universities are doing well. Parents who send their children to private university should not think they are wasting their money; it’s like investment.
Society is always evolving. The needs of yesterday are not the same as those of today. But there have been complaints that our universities, in terms of curricula, are not preparing graduates for today’s work demands. Do you think the private universities are preparing students for the workplace?
That is exactly what we are trying to do at PCU. One of the things we want to do is that for each programme that we are running, we want to identify those things that can be commercialized. There is no programme that cannot be commercialized. In fact, we have discovered that there are things you can commercialise in Yoruba; there are things you can commercialise in Mathematics, Physics, Microbiology and so on. This is skill acquisition and entrepreneurship. We will inculcate this into our curricula. This can only be done in the private universities that are just coming up. The existing universities already have their curricula; it’s very difficult for them to change; and also, number [of students] is one of the major problems in public universities. I am an innovator; I have a product that I market; and it is that spirit that I’m bringing to Precious Cornerstone University. I will train all my students to become innovators and entrepreneurs like me. The way entrepreneurs think is different from the way other people think. And it is that thinking that I’m trying to sell to faculty members, then we now sell it to our students. That’s our plan.
Running a university is very capital-intensive, and there have been calls for TETFund to extend its interventions to private universities. But there are those who believe that public funds should not be used to fund private businesses. Where do you stand?
TETFund is the tax collected from private institutions. It’s even the private universities that should benefit more from TETFund. The TETFund must be extended for funding private institutions.
If you had the chance to change some things about Nigeria’s education sector, what part of the policy would you change?
The first thing is the ability to commercialise products. One of the reasons we have students’ unrest is because many of these students feel there is no future for them. What they are being taught is not relevant to where they will work when they leave school, so they see it as if the future is bleak. So, if anyone is making noise anywhere, they want to join and scatter everything. But when you let them see a positive future, when you teach them to innovate, they will not have time for cultism. The reason they go for cultism is that they will be relevant; so that they will exercise authority and control. They don’t have where they will exert their energy; but when you show them that there are things that can be commercialized in the courses they study, they want to exert their energy there. So, if I have the opportunity to change things, the first thing I will do is to make the curricula to be relevant to life. I want people to acquire skills. We should do researches that are commercialisable; we should stop esoteric researches, the researches that will only end up in the library. That is the kind of research many people are doing.
As the pioneer vice chancellor, what kind of foundation are you trying to build? What target are you focusing on hitting during your tenure?
By the grace of God, I want to introduce programmes that will make the students relevant to the society. In July and August, we organized Bioinformatics training, and we had 39 people from several institutions in Nigeria coming for the training. These are the kind of things I have in mind to do in this place. That training is now a yearly training; we have started planning for that of next year. Also, by the grace of God, I will set up a tissue culture laboratory in Precious Cornerstone University. I already have people that will assist me in doing that; some research institutes in town are already coming around. We also have plans for the Centre for Software Engineering, Data Mining and Robotics. In fact, we have already developed a programme for certificate course in Software Engineering, Data Mining and Robotics. We will take off very powerfully with this programme very shortly.
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