Russia/Ukraine Fallout: NUC Approves Transnational Education Programme for Returnees

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The National Universities Commission (NUC) has approved a transnational educational programme for Nigerian students who have returned home from Ukraine as a result of the ongoing war between Russia and their country of study.

The programme, which would be between the foremost V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and Igbinedion University, would enable students to resume classroom lectures in Igbinedion University campus on a joint programme, under the transnational educational programme.

The programme, which was recommended by the Ukranian Ministry of Education and Science, in line with the guidelines of the NUC, allowed Ukrainian academic institutions to continue online adaptation of study in addition to a joint educational programme with highly rated foreign partner institutions.

A release signed by the Representative of the Ukrainian University in Nigeria, Dr. Cliff Ogbede, said that the joint programme would enable the undergraduate and postgraduate students to continue their academic pursuits uninterrupted in addition to the existing distance learning mode.

Ogbede stated that the joint collaboration is geared towards the creation of a sustainable system of educational, scientific and cultural cooperation between the two universities, based on high international academic standards, thereby encouraging the development of regional cooperation for the harmonisation of educational qualifications.

“In this new collaboration, the two universities will jointly be developing educational activities, expanding opportunities for access to all levels and forms of quality higher education, educational programmes and courses, based on the recommendations of UNESCO, as well as the implementation of the right to academic mobility, which meets the basic principles of the Bologna Declaration.

“Uiversities will expand the cooperation by ensuring quality cross-cultural communications, development of international partnerships for the commercialisation of educational products, encouraging the development of the knowledge economy and enriching the scope of educational programmes, disciplines and teaching experience of both institutions,” he said.

Ogbede concluded by saying that the cooperation would enable the two institutions in future to start conducting joint educational programmes, degree and qualification courses with common or dual certification, which might include “the harmonisation of curricula between the two parties and mutual recognition of prior periods of study at the partner university, conducting parallel educational programmes that provides for awarding of separate certifications of each separate institution and open and distance learning, providing for the provision of quality academic programmes and courses leading to the award of qualifications, with no space or time limitations.”