Some HND Holders Perform Better Than BSC Holders Says ASUP

Bauchi - The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has described as demoralising, the erstwhile dichotomy between HND and B.Sc in the country.

Its National President, Comrade Usman Dutse, a lecturer in the Department of General Studies, Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, made
this known in an interview on Wednesday.

``At the last meeting of the council on establishment a memo was presented by the minister of education demanding the removal
of the dichotomy placed on HND and B.Sc graduates.

And now if you look at the environment and the situation  happening  in the country, you would see that the abolition of the dichotomy is long overdue.

One of the major reasons the meeting and other stakeholders gave for the removal of the dichotomy is the hitherto different entry requirements into both the university and polytechnic.

Now the requirements have been
harmonised. There was also the issue of curriculum, which was not wide.

We have a lot of HND graduates in the civil service and they have contributed a lot, but the dichotomy is killing their morale because they feel that their qualification is
not being appreciated.

Now it has been discovered that
performance at work is not based on the certificate that people have or where you come from, but on the skills and the ability you have.

Experience has shown that there are a lot of HND holders that perform better than some degree holders.

The dichotomy even made people to give preference to university education at the expense of polytechnic education because if
you look at the application for admission to tertiary institutions every year, you will see that applicants keep applying more to the universities.

In the last admission, 1.6 million applicants applied to the universities, but only 38,000 applied to the polytechnics, while only 29,000 applied to collages of education.

The reason behind the difference was this dichotomy thing.

Out of the 1.6 million people that applied to the universities, only 300,000 were admitted.

It means that 1.3 million applicants would not be offered admission.

Dichotomy has denied people
polytechnic education, but with the removal of  dichotomy now, the tide will change a little especially with the Federal Government.