NUC deploys technology for varsity census

The National Universities Commission (NUC) will deploy technology for the collection and collation of statistical digest of Nigerian universities for the purpose of creating accurate and reliable data for effective planning and administration of the system.

The census exercise would determine the number of students enrolled in Nigerian universities at various levels and programmes as well as gender, number of academic and non-academic staff, number of professors, PhD degree and Graduate Assistant Lecturers among others.

Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Rasheed, made this known at the opening ceremony of one-day meeting of the Commission with the Directors of Academic Planning and Information Technology from Nigerian universities.

Lack of data in the past had hampered effective planning for the system, but NUC boss said the Commission took a bold step to address this challenge when three years ago the first data collection exercise was conducted in order to have accurate and reliable data for planning and effective management of the system.

Rasheed said: “This is a meeting the Directors of Academic Planning and Directors of Information Technology in Nigerian Universities.

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“We have called them to discuss the modalities for collection and collation of statistical digest for the year 2019- January-December 31.

“We are interested, as we have been doing over the last three years, to gather accurate, reliable data about the enrollment in Nigerian Universities, how many students are in the universities, level by level, programme by programme, how many of them are male and how many of them are female.

“How many females are in Engineering and how males are in Medicine for example.

“We are also interested in getting the data about the lecturers. We want to know how many lecturers are currently involved in the Nigerian University System; how many of them are male and female, how many of them have PhD degree and how many of them are pursuing PhD degree and how many of them are trainee academic or graduate assistant lecturers.

“In essence, we are interested in data for planning purposes. Without accurate and reliable data there can be no serious planning; without planning there can be no progress.

“We have expanded the variables that was why the two relevant directors were brought and we are confident that within the next one month we would have all the data we need and the release it to Nigerians for information and planning purposes.

“We are also interested in getting the data about the non-teaching staff, whether they are in the administration or finance. So, we are interested in data in planning the university system for growth,” he said.

While stressing that without planning, there could be no development, Rasheed said the meeting would approve template for the exercise saying he was optimistic that within the next four weeks, the data would be published online and hard copies for distribution around the world.