The Executive Secretary, National Board for Technical Education, Prof. Idris Bugaje, has disclosed that over 30,000 Nigerian Higher National Diploma holders have applied for its top-up programme.
He fielded questions from the News Agency of Nigeria on its newly launched top-up programme for HND holders.
The programme is for the HND holders to acquire a Bachelor of Science in their choice course.
Bugaje said the board had no power to award degrees to students, but was able to help HND holders by facilitating the programmes with foreign universities while introducing credit mapping to aid learning.
He said: “We have a software that does credit mapping.
“We have already fed our HND graduates with that software so it will now pick the curriculum of the foreign university, compare them together to bring out what is the difference between the two.
“We are now in discussion with a number of these foreign universities from Malaysia, Russia, India, but with time we hope we can populate about 15 to 20 universities.
“Though it’s a gradual process, this will offer more opportunities for students.
“So far we have gotten applicants for over 30,000.
“About two weeks ago, it was 15,000 and within this two weeks, it has doubled and I am very confident that in the next two weeks, we may hit about 50,000 applicants.
