By Moses Akobi
In January 2026, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced that polytechnics would be empowered to award degrees in a bid to end the intractable HND-bachelor’s degree dichotomy. The policy change, if followed through, marks the boldest reform in polytechnic education in 50 years or more. Dr Alausa, who has introduced several significant reforms in the education sector since his appointment, described the move as a “landmark policy shift” that would end decades of discrimination against polytechnic graduates.
For decades, graduates with HND certificates have faced serious disadvantages in employment, promotion structure, placement of salary, and access to postgraduate education and international recognition, even when their training has increasingly aligned with the needs and demands of modern labour market.
This dichotomy continues to reduce the technical workforce of Nigeria through the discouragement of young students from the pursuit of careers that are vocationally oriented, hence contributing to shortages of skills in key industrial sectors of the economy. Bright secondary school leavers who should be studying technical fields instead chase university degrees in humanities or social sciences because they’ve watched polytechnic graduates hit career ceilings. Nigeria produces thousands of unemployed graduates in oversaturated fields while factories struggle to find qualified technicians.
Nigeria is not the first country to wrestle with this problem. The United Kingdom maintained a “binary divide” between universities and polytechnics from 1965 to 1992. The UK’s 1992 Further and Higher Education Act ended this divide, allowing 35 polytechnics to become degree-awarding universities. What happened next matters for Nigeria.
Many former polytechnics in the UK demonstrated excellence quickly. In the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise, De Montfort University’s Built Environment submission was rated 4 out of 5 stars, placing it in the category of nationally excellent research. The University of Salford topped its unit of assessment with 5 stars, matching University College London and Bristol. It turns out that when you remove structural barriers to recognition, excellence that was always there becomes visible. Would institutions like Yabatech, for example, rise to become one of Nigeria’s leading degree-awarding institutions?
Polytechnics were established to complement universities by emphasising practical, skills-based training in engineering, applied sciences, business, and technology. But policy frameworks and employment regulations repeatedly gave priority to university degrees over HND. This inequality discouraged students from enrolling in polytechnics and reinforced the perception that technical education was inferior.
Previous governments recognised this problem but lacked the courage to fix it. For years, the FG has made repeated pronouncements on ending the dichotomy between HND and BSc to no avail. Under the previous administration, the government proposed phasing out the HND and granting polytechnics degree-awarding status. But this was never done. Would the 2026 pronouncement be different? Perhaps. The key question is whether the 2026 pronouncement will be different from previous failed attempts.
One of the most imminent challenges is inadequate funding. Many Nigerian polytechnics suffer from chronic underinvestment, outdated laboratories, limited research capacity, and insufficient teaching equipment. The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has consistently complained that FG policies were destroying polytechnic education through chronic underinvestment. Without sustained financial commitment, degree-awarding autonomy may lead to inflation of credentials rather than the enhancement of quality.
Nigerian accreditation bodies must also develop polytechnic-specific frameworks that stress applied learning outcomes while not neglecting the theoretical grounding that is the hallmark of a degree education. This makes polytechnic specific accreditation benchmarks focused on applied competence, industry exposure, and graduate outcomes more important than simply replicating university standards.
Societal perception also remains a structural constraint. Deep-rooted cultural preferences for university education may likely still linger even after changes in policy. But this too can change. The UK found that as former polytechnics demonstrated excellence, the “post-1992” label became increasingly irrelevant. Within years, describing institutions by their pre-1992 status looked “positively prehistoric.”
The federal and state governments should collaborate on the establishment of a dedicated polytechnic development fund: a ring-fenced funding strategy created and exclusively dedicated to polytechnics transitioning to degree-awarding status. The fund should be channelled to support modernisation of infrastructure, upgrades of laboratory and workshops, provision of digital learning facilities, and training of staff and development of postgraduate programmes.
Dr Alausa has already announced a special TETFund intervention in 2026 to upgrade polytechnic engineering schools with state-of-the-art equipment, following similar support for medical colleges in 2025.This timely funding can ensure that polytechnics are better positioned to deliver on their core mandate. Policymakers must continue to protect the technical and vocational mandate of polytechnics by mandating extended industrial attachments, limiting excessive duplication of university-style programmes, and encouraging applied research and innovation systems.
The alternative to this reform is a maintenance of the status quo which is unacceptable. It means continuing to tell polytechnic graduates that their qualifications are inherently inferior, continuing to discourage talented students from technical careers, and continuing to wonder why Nigeria can’t develop a robust skilled workforce. The government is right to propose transitioning polytechnics from awarding HND to awarding degrees, but the biggest work is in excellent implementation of this good idea, and the bigger prize lies in building an economy that genuinely values technical skills, rewards applied competence, and aligns education policy with Nigeria’s industrial ambitions.
Moses Akobi is a research assistant with EduIntel.
