In this interview with ADEGUNLE OLUGBAMILA, Vice Chancellor, Caleb University, Imota, Lagos, Prof Daniel Ayandeji Aina, explains why Nigeria should adopt the Korean ‘mind education’ system.
Why do you recommend the Korean education system for Nigeria?
You will recall that South Korea emerged from the Korean War without natural resources, but people. They therefore embarked on mind education that we call value-based education here. In Korea, they teach dignity of labour. As a professor of Engineering, you are only recognised by what you are professing and not by merely wearing suit and tie. Your office is more in the laboratory with your overall on rather than wearing suit and teaching your students using smart boards which we often do here. That is why our education in Nigeria is not functional. You only wear suit during meetings; once that meeting is over you are back into the laboratory.
But as you said, Nigeria also has value-based education system which is almost the same
The Korean system is deeper and more practicable! And the idea is how what you had learned in class can be turned to practical use so you don’t start looking for jobs upon graduation. This is the more reason why Caleb University is collaborating with the Institute of Mind Education in Korea so as to adapt their methodology to our colleagues here that had value-based education. The Korean Educational International Youth Forum has linkages in about 90 countries that subscribe to it and Caleb University is now happy to be one.
But what format does this education take?
Their (Korean) undergraduates are integrated into service education whereby you used what you acquired in class as a form of community service. What we do in our NYSC here is that people are just posted to say Zamfara State, and the person can then arrange with their local NYSC to wander away for months only to return and collect their certificates. But in the United State or South Korea, graduands are allowed to move to anywhere in the world to render service. That is why those societies are a lot better because they produce selfless individuals who are determined to help societal cause.
There are series of cases bordering on insecurity in Ikorodu which is your next door neighbor, what security checks have you to ward off intruders?
It’s pretty sad the insecurity situation in Ikorodu and environs. But generally, let me say in a security situation what you need do is go a step ahead of your potential attacker. Once that psychology is created, that scares potential predators away.
Second, we have excellent relationship with government, police, and other nongovernmental security agencies. We have a rapid response team here. They had been here before I became VC. We have our own security network. We also have spirituality because we are a faith-based university. The Lord says if the He doesn’t build the house, the watchers labour in vain.
With their tuition, there have been arguments that private universities have come to supplant public institutions and dim the hope of the poor.
Some of those in the labour union carry all sorts of rumour that private universities are exorbitant because they felt that government allowing private universities to thrive will have a negative impact on their negotiation with government.
For instance, our tuition here is N350,000, but when you look at our facilities, you will know it is not the N350,000 that we use in running the university. A cumulative salary of a professor before tax is between N380,000 and N500,000. So, if you have N350,000 tuition here that means a student fee cannot pay a professor in a month.
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