₦airaland Forum

Nigeria needs all of them now.

instead of going for pure mathematics why not go for mathematics/Econs or Statistics/Econs. Econs as a course also is very good sha.

instead of Mathematics why not go for Statistics? u will be well grounded in econometrics and economic statisitics as a Statistician and will also be a mathematician to some extent.

instead of Mathematics why not go for Statistics?

what is the difference btw gun and bow & arrow? what is the difference btw a gun and a spear? what is the difference btw a gun and a matchet? what is the difference btw a gun and a dagger? If people could be allowed to keep bow & arrow, spears, daggers and matchets, why wont people be allowed to keep guns? after all they are used for the same purpose; that is killing of people.

Enough is enough, we need to own guns too. after all it is part of our tradition just the same way it is some peoples tradition to own daggers, spears and long matchets

inferiority complex. you with HND, have you not learnt more than somebody with bsc? what nonsense conversion is that?

In nigeria, polytechnic is polytechnic, HND is HND no matter where it is obtained from, be it Yaba or Kaduna. So a BA or BSc Degree from katsina state university or Nassarawa state university is considered to be above HND obtained from YabaTech and Kadpoly, and will be given preference in terms of employment and admission for Masters Degree.

@Hnd-holder

Long time. you dey so? This HND wahala is still on o. I wonder why this government keep deceiving people. Everytime they say they have removed the ceiling stopping HND holders from reaching level 17 in the civil service, yet no HND holder has been promoted to level 15. Even govt parastatals still advertise and state clearly that it is only Degree holders that they want. This thing go end so?

tooslar:
Actually I don't know what you mean by credibility but all I can tell you is that they are very real I have done Business with them on a number of occasions.

pls how good is the recharge printing business with ngrgsm people? i want to find out how reliable they are too. how well do u know them?

pls someone should contribute on this issue. i need to understand why FCT minister is always a northerner.

polytechnic education is a crime in Nigeria, do not go close to it. Even government themselves still discriminate against polytechnic HND graduates. Flee away from HND.

Since the inception of FCT ministry, all the ministers have been one northerner to the other. is it a constitutional right that FCT minister must come from the north? Why can't a southerner be appointed to head that ministry? Nigerians we need to ask questions o; or is FCT an emirate?

cre8tivity:
when you accept illegal promotion = unpleasant outcome.

what do u mean by illegal promotion? should Ribadu have said NO to a promotion coming from the president? If you were in his shoes, would you say NO to a promotion coming from the president?

but what is Yar'adua saying about all these nonsense that has been happening to Ribadu? is it that yar'adua is the one that is even masterminding the whole thing?  Is it that yar'adua was not happy that Ribadu was fighting corruption?

old news. nonsense!!

t-rhymes:
Degree is attached to it, and that is all that matters. It is surely going to rough shoulders with Bsc Degree to any length. All my family members, including me have an HND cert, also we all work in companies were they pay us well with no discrimination. I think its all about the connections coupled with proffessional certificates.

Are u saying all members of your family attended poly? Na wa o; una for share una selves naw!

Both are Bachelors' Degrees. Bsc has more thoery in its curriculum while BTech has more practicals.

what's so special aout polytechnics awarding BTech? This issue has been going on for long and yet no positive result. Do you think there won't be discrimination against poly BTech graduates? don't you think it is a re-branding of the HND certificate?

na today? BTech from poly and HND, what difference does it make? would that stop the discrimination of poly graduates? BTech is just a re-branding of HND thats all. Government should rather empower polytechnics to award Masters Degree in science & Technology.

visitor30:
Ishmael, the word you used there is APPLY!!!
Yes they can apply and if the company's employment policy allows them to get past the screening stage so be it.

Why're you asking MrCrackles what he meant by this statement!Or your question doesn't require a YES or NO answer!!!!

Yea man, i asked two questions. You can check my first post. The first one has been answered as "YES" they can apply. The second one is would HND+PGD be considered for the job after applying? This has not been answered.

MrCrackles:
I say yes you can!

I don't understand ur answer very well. Are you saying if a job advert requires a Bsc Degree, someone with HND + PGD can also apply for that same job and will be considered?

just want to find out if a HND holder with PGD (i.e. HND + PGD) can apply for a job whose advert requirement is "University Degree required"? Will the HND + PGD holder be considered?

i just want to find out if a HND holder with PGD (i.e. HND + PGD) can apply for a job whose advert requirement is "University Degree required"? Will the HND + PGD holder be considered?

May God help us o. Pls HND holder wats ur e-mail address? i need to send a mail to u.

@HND-holder

Help me ask the guy o.

amata053:
This should not be a debatable topic if we actually understand the roles played by the two different institutions awarding these certificates. Bsc holders are the administrative cadre while HND holders are the technical staff, and each category of staff enjoys equal opportunities at their places of work. http://www.BizInfo1.com/?ix=4455

What difference does that make? Can the administrative cadre do all the work without the technical cadre? Everybody should be encouraged whether admin or technical staff. Equal opportunity should be given to all cadres.

@HND-holder

Have you come across this post? it's very important that you read it, cos it makes sense.

sendtodeji

Re: B. Sc. vs HND: An Unsettled Case?
« #214 on: Yesterday at 06:37:05 PM »
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It's being a very long discussion. I just stumbled on it today (November 26th, 2008) and I was able to follow the discussion from when it started. As you might have guessed, I am also a product of the Polytechnic institution. I graduated in 2003 and completed my mandatory NYSC in 2004 before moving to the US in the same year. When I completed my ND, I had attempted to go to OAU to obtain a BSc. However, the prevalent admission politics stopped me from achieving that. I went back to the Polytechnic to complete my HND. Today, I am glad that I did. Some of my colleagues who had the patience and wherewithal to deal with the admission process got admitted a year after. Unfortunately, majority of them didn't graduate until 2007, 4 years after I completed my HND! Who has that time to waste?

I am currently pursuing a Masters in Information Technology with concentration in Telecommunications Management at a University in the US. One of the entry requirements for getting an admission for graduate studies is to first have your credentials evaluated by a Credential Evaluation agency like www.wes.com To my surprise, my HND evaluation came back as "Equivalent to a US 4 year BS degree". Now, someone else who comes from Nigeria to pursue a Masters degree over here who has a BSc from Nigeria will also get the same I evaluation that I got. The point is, the discrimination we are experiencing is an evil offspring of bad government educational policy. By the way, is the university becoming a cult system? How else can we explain the term "convocate"? I will prefer to define it as a University cult system for students who passed through a university educational system in Nigeria. If our dear friend HND-Holder was able to distinguish himself with Ph.D in Engineering, while should someone with inferiority complex and low self-esteem criticize him for passing through a Polytechnic? It's utter nonsense which I think should stop. I'm confident that it will eventually stop as we continue to have more and more Ph.Ds like HND-holder who are willing to stand up for the cause.

In the US, they also have a system of Colleges, Polytechnics and Universities. Some colleges award degrees up to BS. You achieve an Associate degree when you complete a 2 year course in a college, which is equivalent to our ND. Then you can proceed to the University to complete an additional 2 years to obtain a BS. You can enter directly to the university from year one to end but it's more expensive that way. That's why most people opt to college first and then transfer to a university to finish up. Putting that in perspective, I am for the idea of preserving the Polytechnic system for awarding ND as "mid-level manpower" producing institution. HND should be scraped and replaced with BS or cease to exist.

We are all a victim of a faulty system where some people just want to feel superior at someone else's expense even though everything about them says otherwise. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with this crime. Yes, it's a crime. The system is so worse now that you can only gain admission to most universities only if you are willing to "buy" it. Some people will demand up to NGN 80,000 to offer you admission. What for? That's the reason why our university system keeps churning out mediocres. A director at a major oil company recently made a remark about the university system producing first-class graduates who don't even understand basic concepts of Geology. I was expecting the University community to put up a logical defense. The few responses I read in the Newspapers then was further disappointing. A lecturer from LASU wrote that there are not enough fund to carry out research. I think you can only get funds when an entity realizes the potentials of your research. The reality of the matter is, majority of our academicians are not keeping up with recent developments in their fields. They are relying on archaic knowledge and principles, further passing that on to their students. By the time the students graduate and get into the field, they soon discover that things are different from what they are thought.

I also have a thing against going from classroom to classroom to become a lecturer/professor. The crucial industrial experience element is missing! How can you teach a concept that you do not have a hands-on experience with like it should be thought? It's not possible! Let our professors go and compare their credentials with that of their foreign counterparts, they will realize that their foreign counterparts have industrial experience first before opting for the academics. That's the route that the Polytechnic system follows. Make no mistakes, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Polytechnic system. The problem is the system in which it is being run. The Polytechnic system, if given its due recognition, is the system that will take us to the technological level that we put us at par with developed nations like the US and UK. What is killing us in Nigeria is the denial of our own ability. If we embrace home-grown technology and encourage people to be creative like it's done in countries like India, China and Japan, we would realize that we can compete favorably at all levels with those countries technology-wise. The lecturer at LASU claiming that they don't have funds and equipments to work with in order to perform meaningful research is very wrong in his argument. We want government to provide everything. An academic community should be able to improvise. What happened to reverse-engineering? If government is able to buy one of an equipment, I think the best thing should be for them to disassemble it and come up with a means of producing a similar technology and even refine it to make it better. This is what we can do with even the little resources that we have in that country. If a computer science professor is doing a research in clustered or grid computing and he is complaining about not having enough resources to perform a research, how about him putting up a Beowulf cluster with scraps from computer village and good old Linux OS?

I must confess to the person reading this that the knowledge and experience that I am using at work right now is a knowledge that I acquired while I was a student. It is easy for me to transfer that knowledge to any area of IT. I was trained on DOS, now I work on Linux and Unix. The transition was seamless and have even come to enjoy it more than Windows! One thing that I also have to say is that what you become after school is not a function of who taught you at school. It's not a function of being taught by a professor or a "Mister" (I wonder what that means). It's a function of who you are. Those people are not meant to be "all-knowing". There role is to guide your learning and answer your questions. That's another problem that we have in the Nigerian educational system. Our professors and "Misters" think their role is to exact their academic prowess by failing students. Well, I don't think that's what they should be doing. The government should institute a policy that will enable students too to evaluate their teachers. I can tell you that not all the "misters" that taught me knew so much about what they were teaching. In fact, most times, I get more confused after a lecture. Which is why at times, I prefer to skip some classes (little confession) because I am way ahead what the "mister" was going to teach. The "mister" is relying on solution from a lecture not to grade my work whereas I am giving him a practical approach which could be different from the book or lecture note solution. I can't tell you how many times I was bitten before I realize the truth. What's the point, what you become after school is not and will never be a function of what you were taught in school. It's more a function of who you are and what you can do with what you learnt in school.

I hope to some day retire from the industry to the classroom to teach after obtaining my Ph.D like HND-holder. The one and only place I would like that to happen is in Nigeria. I hope I will not be discriminated against by my academic colleagues too. If that happens, I will start a technology institute that will bring "real" people together to produce solutions that will affect our system. At this age in Nigeria, we should have our own home-made car. Someone attempted that recently but he was also sabotaged. We should have our own home made electronics. A lot of Nigerians are involved in the design and development of such things outside the country. I wonder why they can't do that within? Sabotage! As any one read the story of Jelani Aliyu, the guy that designed the GM next generation electric car? Has anyone heard about Emeagwali? Google this names and see what they are doing in diaspora. They are like you and I. Jelani Aliyu is also a Polytechnic product. He had the opportunity to go to a University both chose a Polytechnic instead. He wanted practical experience and the Polytechnic system suits his purpose and vision. Look what he's doing today.

I rest my case for today.

Hnd-holder:
HND holders should agree with GOD re write their papers

How?? go back and do Bsc in the university? may be dat will help.

it's really an amusing issue. what you don't know is that some universities don't give HND holders the chance of getting Msc. what do you you think would happen to HND holders in the academic sector who are lecturers with only HND or highest PGD?? Will they still be relevant??

@HND-holder

Have Government implemented any of those things above??

Redfox:
To this guy
Am aware of the fact that that we have taught-based and research-based Msc, but u will agree with me that the taught-based is more research-inclined than Bsc.

To Ishmael
Don’t get me wrong, if u truly understood the courses taught during your undergraduate days, then u would not have much problem tackling the Msc, that applies to every other course. Presently it has become obvious that students spend their quality time chasing grades rather than knowledge. Besides what could be so difficult in statistics. most areas of specialization in Msc statistics revolves around the concept of TIME SERIES ANALYSIS, INFERENCE(LABORATORY),ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES, DESIGN OF EXPERIMENT AND SAMPLING THEORY AND THE USE OF STATISTICAL PACKAGES LIKE STATA,EVIEWS,MINITAB,SPSS,SAS etc TO ANALYSE THESE THINGS.hey I know what am saying, try me.

yes, Msc is suppose to be easier than Bsc, but it has never been in nigeria with the kind of wicked people we have as lecturers. They are not always happy seeing people bagging Msc Degrees and catching up with them.

Hnd-holder:
I think the government wanted it so if not why do they fail to keep their own promise

have they ever kept to any promise concerning polytechnic before?