There are five types of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. These institutions offer post secondary school education to students from within the country and from abroad teaching them different programs thereby equipping them for their future chosen career.
The tertiary institutions in Nigeria includes university, polytechnic, college of education, technical schools and monotechnic. What differentiate these schools is the type of certificates they award students at the end of their programs and the duration of years that it takes for each type of the institution to complete training for the students. The difference also lies on the field of training each institution give.
While university institution runs all programs including engineering, law and medical sciences, the polytechnic focus it teaching on technical education. If there is any polytechnic that teaches medical science it must be the technical aspects of it. Primarily, the least number of years for a university to run programs is four years. while polytechnic is also four years but it is not concurrently.
University: institution in Nigeria is control by National University Commission (NUC). At the time this article was been put together, Nigeria has 32 private Universities, 40 states owned universities and 40 federal government controlled universities, making the number of universities in Nigeria be 132. They run programs that lead to the award of bachelor degree certificate after successful completion of four years for social and natural sciences, five years for engineering programs and even seven years for some medical science programs.
The first university to be established in Nigeria is University of Ibadan and that was in 1948. This make it one of the oldest universities in Africa.
Polytechnic Institutions: National Board of Technical Education define polytechnic as post secondary institution that runs technical education programs which lead to award of Diploma (Ordinary National Diploma or Higher National Diploma) or Certificate degree in all courses including engineering.
Polytechnic programs are not runs concurrently like that of the University. Ordinary National Diploma is first run before a Higher National Diploma. There is always a break of one year, a time when a student would have to do compulsory industrial training before he could be allowed to sought for admission for Higher National Diploma.
There were 127 polytechnics, comprises private, state and federal government owned in Nigeria as at the time of writing this post. Private organizations control more polytechnics than state and federal government, they control 55 numbers of polytechnics. A product of this type of Institution's are always refers to as technician or technologist depending on the level of his training..
College of Education provide training for teachers be it for technical education, business education or host of others. All teacher training colleges offer training programs that lead to the award of certificate which is refers to as National Certificate of Education (NCE).
Technical Schools are part of tertiary institutions specializing in vocational technical training. It is designed to train students who have no qualification to enter either polytechnic or university to acquire technical skill. All states in Nigeria has at least one technical school offering certificate program for their students. It should be noted that the technical board: National Board of Technical Education (NBTE) also regulate technical schools.
Monotechnic in Nigeria offer training in a single scientific or technical program. polytechnic engineering, polytechnic Nigeria All School of Agriculture, Schools of Health Science, Cooperative Colleges, Computer Training Institute and all Information and Communication Technology Centers fall under this category. Nigeria has nothing less than forty-seven number of this school. They run program for the award of Bachelor degree, Diploma degree, Certificate and Higher National Diploma (HND) degree.