As someone who works with recruiters, companies and job seekers, there’s a topic that has been interesting to me – the dichotomy between HND and BSc. I’ll not go into technical details especially salaries and others but holders of HND could relate to it.
If I’m to give an opinion, I’ll sadly not vilify the dichotomy because contrary to politically correct opinion, HND and BSc are very different.
Over the course of time, I've learnt three main lessons from this HND/BSc fight.

HND is not equal to BSc

The intention of creating HND was not to be at par with BSc but to satisfy a niche – midlevel professionals especially in technical fields. Courses like Arts were not the intention of HND but afterthought by Polytechnics to attract students.
There’s a reason why someone who has HND is referred to as a technologist why someone who bagged a degree is an engineer. That alone should tell you that they are not different.

HND's Curriculum is Limited

I know I have an opinion on this since I’ve experienced both HND and BSc. I did HND 1 before I dropped out due to financial issues, I later did BSc. Hence, I can tell you that BSc covers a lot more concept than HND.
For instance, comparing the first year of both programmes you will see that BSc is more on the introduction than that of ND. Courses like Introduction to Philosophy, Nigerian People and Culture are important courses that ought to be part of the first year of an ND programme. But they are not.
Modern Physics that ought to be a compulsory part of an engineering programme does not feature in an ND programme. How then can the graduate of HND contribute to modern engineering discussion?

The HND Concept is Outdated

Last year when Dr Ramon Adedoyin, the executive chairman of The Polytechnic, Ile-Ife suggested that HND should be scrapped, I was elated. Now if someone who is the chairman of a polytechnic is saying this, don’t you think he’s right?
According to him, HND is outdated and ought to be scrapped. He even suggested that polytechnics in Nigeria should be upgraded to degree-awarding institutions.
It’s no longer news that those who introduced HND to Nigeria has stopped using it. In the UK for instance, HND is phased and replaced with something called foundation degree. Many Commonwealth countries that had HND are replacing it with B.Tech, Nigeria should do so too. Even Ghana has upgraded its polytechnics to degree awarding institutions.

The truth remains that the only way to end the dichotomy is to not create one. That can only come when the Nigerian education authorities reform the higher education system. We all know that even the BSc programme also needs reform too.