The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), says polytechnics in Nigeria will no longer offer computer science as a single course following the unbundling of programme into four new courses.
In a letter dated January 8, 2024, and signed by Prof. Idris M. Bugaje, Executive Secretary of NBTE, the decision is as a result of the “emerging trends and the need to strategically position our graduates for a more effective national development.”
The letter, which was addressed to the Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and copied to key stakeholders said “there will no longer be admissions into the HND COMPUTER SCIENCE programme from the 2024/2025 academic session,” and “students that have already been admitted into the former programmes are given up to 2025 to phase out.
“The grace period is to enable concerned institutions to graduate students that were admitted under the old curricula.”
The new specialized areas floated out of the former are as follows:
i) HND Artificial Intelligence
ii) HND Networking and Cloud Computing
iii) HND Software and Web Development
iv) HND Cybersecurity and Data Protection
The letter further informed NYSC DG that, “admissions from the 2024/2025 academic session into the erstwhile HND Computer Science programme will be only in the aforementioned four specialized areas.”
