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| Practical Education In A Depressed Economy: The Polytechnic As A Way Out |
Ehioghiren, Efe Efosa, PhD
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Abstract:
Education of today has continued to display educational character that negates the laid down educational philosophies as enshrined in our National Policy on Education. Practical education has continued to play an essential role in the social economic development of any nation and study has shown that 65million Nigerian today are unemployed this is a time bomb waiting to explode and over 75 percentage of this number are without Polytechnic/Practical Education. Nigeria being a consuming nation depends on more than 85percent on foreign/imported goods and pays less attention to creating the enabling environment for her local industries to grow. Fundamentally, the essence of polytechnic education is to run career-centred and more practically oriented programmes significantly, for the purposes of realising the whole essence and objective of polytechnic education in human resource development, it is imperative for students to acquire both theoretical and practical knowledge and technical skills. This can be accomplished through institutional support and collaboration as well as polytechnic-industry linkage. The study examine some factors that could led to economy depression; over-dependence on importation, shortage of gas supply to manufacturing companies and gas based industries, infrastructures decade among other which will bring about product quality compromise, failure in financial market, social, business, unemployment. The practical nature of Polytechnic/Technical Education (PTE) makes it unique in content and approach thereby requiring special care and attention. The inputs of PTE are so visible to the extent that even an illiterate could see when "failures" occur. Products of PTE are solving social problems in sustainable ways. For them to do so, they need to be sufficiently informed in technical education concepts and the application of its theoretical principles to solve practical problems. The study concludes that the magic of liberating the nation from technological backwardness and over dependence on foreign products and manpower aids. Therefore, efforts to achieve the goal should be directed towards PTE, through the reform of policies, with conscious efforts directed toward developing the full potentials and capacities of the human resources to move along with the tide of change across the world. If all the way forward options are implemented fully, the imbalance between the products of education and the labour market needs would have been substantially reduced in the nation. Therefore, adequate financing Polytechnic/Technical Education effectively becomes a determinant factor for moving out of a depressed economy.
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