Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has announced the unbundling of the Higher National Diploma (HND) course in Computer Science in Polytechnics and Monotechnics across the nation.
The announcement was contained in a letter dated January 8, 2024, and signed by the Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education, Prof Idris Bugaje, addressed to all Polytechnics and Monotechnics nationwide.
Bugaje said the decision to unbundle the course was “due to emerging trends and the need to strategically position our graduates for a more effective national development.”
The NBTE said that consequently, the Computer Science programme in Polytechnics and Monotechnics will cease to exist. At the same time, there will no longer be admissions into the HND Computer Science programme from the 2024/2025 academic session.
The Board listed the new specialised courses floated out of the Computer Science course to include HND Artificial Intelligence, HND Networking & Cloud Computing, HND Software & Web Development, and HND Cybersecurity & Data Protection.
“In view of the above, you are requested to kindly note that admissions from the 2024/2025 academic session into the erstwhile HND Computer Science programme will be only in the aforementioned four specialized areas,” NBTE said in the statement.
In the meantime, the Federal Government insists that students who have already been admitted into the former programmes are given up to 2025 to phase out, noting that “the grace period is to enable concerned institutions to graduate students who were admitted under the old curricula.”
