Educational Alliances & Collaboration: The Swansea-OOU Model - Ik Muo, PhD

Educational Alliances & Collaboration: The Swansea-OOU Model 

Ik Muo, PhD. Department of Business Administration, OOU, Ago-Iwoye

Strategic alliances have become key features of the global business world as organisations continuously strive to achieve sustainable competitive superiority. In this instance, organisations undertake environmental assessment, identify their SWOT( Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and align with other organisations so as to optimize their strengths and opportunities while overcoming or warding off their weaknesses and threats. Universities, which are at the apex of the educational and knowledge matrix (and some have gone into direct production),  are also involved in the race for  competitive superiority. In the first instance, as is the case with other organisations, they have their own objectives and have to design the optimal routes to the attainment of those goals, and that is what strategy is all about. It is also in the character and culture of universities to collaborate with others, both within and without, to exchange, import and export knowledge, sharpen the edges of research and ensure that they continue to be relevant in the UNIVERSE, from which they draw their names( UNIVERSities). As it is, while some institutions go out of their way to seek alliances ( linkages) with the universities, the universities are on their own seeking alliances with other organisations and institutions. Whatever the direction of the alliance-seeking, it is a strategic move both for the ‘seeker’ and the   ‘giver’. A new model of university collaboration is however emerging; a model with is both tripartite and competitive and that is where the Swansea-OOU model comes in.

 Sometimes in 2018, the British Council called for proposals from  Nigerian Universities to access grants to support programmes in sustainable funding models for Nigerian tertiary education sector as well as students employability. Three UK universities were selected as partners for this project. After a rigorous selection process,  the Olabisi Onabanjo University and the Swansea University Wales, which is the lead partner, won the £10,000  grant for the project. The 120 year old Swansea is one of the topmost universities in the UK as measured in various dimensions of value-creation, graduate employment prospects, quality of research outputs funding sustainability and symbiotic relationship with industries. The collaborating universities  are to utilize the grant  to support sustainable finding models and employability through a series of activities including exchange of visits, capacity building workshops, developing new and improved sustainable funding models, enhancing entrepreneurial development of  graduates and hands-on interaction and relation with industry .

In June this year,  a high-powered team from OOU, visited Swansea University  to understudy the best practices in sustainable funding models through entrepreneurial and business venture activities, strategic planning and collaboration for continual learning and development, and strategic meetings with CEOs of some enterprise. In July, the Swansea School of management  ‘retaliated’ by literally  relocating to OOU and indeed, Ogun state and engaging in one whole week of intensive collaborative and creative activities aimed at achieving their joint mandate. On the team were Paul Jones (team leader),  Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Dr Samuel Ebie, a son of the soil, who had come in earlier as a one-man advance team, Dr Price Alan and Thomas Roderick. The visit which lasted from 19^th to 26^th July started with a symbiotic business roundtable involving the Swansea team,  an expanded OOU team and  CEOs, captains of industry and entrepreneurs across various sectors of the Nigerian economy. This was indeed an unadulterated gown-to-town interaction revolving around the tripartite agenda of the bilateral collaboration.

This was followed by a brainstorming session between the Swansea and OOU team to capture the key outcomes of the previous session,  and another ‘fellowship’ with team leaders to wrap up the various  discussions and outcomes. The 4^th day was a special session with ‘agripreneures’ and a final wrap-up session between the leadership of the two teams.

The second phase of the activities designed for that strategic alliance has just been concluded. It is just the end of the beginning. The peculiarities of this alliance include the involvement and support of the British Council, the competitive nature of the alliance, making it a relationship between the able and willing and its multiple objectives that go beyond the normal academic alliances to include sustainable funding model for OOU, enhancing the employability of OOU graduates and  significantly improve the relationship between the University and the industries, thus making the former more relevant to the needs of the later.  It is too early in the day to aggregate the score but from the seriousness with which both parties pursued the programme, I believe that the yield will be enviable. It is expected that the outcome of this strategic alliance, especially as it affects funding sustainability and graduate employability, will gradually permeate the entire educational system in Nigeria. I also hope that other multilateral institutions would emulate this gesture by British Council and thus increase the number of focused collaboration between local and foreign institutions from other parts of the world.

Other Matters: The trouble with Nigeria; As rats take custody of dry-fish!

Our people say that it is an exercise in futility to contract the safety of dry-fish to a security consultancy outfit manned by rats or to handover the protection of yams to goats.

Last year, I commented about the gargantuan challenges faced by AMCON( AMCON, Like Biafran cassava and Nigerian generators; BsinessDay, 18/7/19). The MD of AMCON had enumerated its various challenges and expressed the hope that ‘something’ would be done by the executive  and legislators to make and execute the appropriate laws. However and unfortunately, the same CEO of AMCON has just  informed the nation, whose citizens have effective shock-absorbers, that ministers and lawmakers are among the chronic debtors owing AMCON N5trn! In effect, those who are supposed to help AMCON to recover the debts, through legislative and executive duties, are the very people who are owing the debts and whom, according to AMCON, borrowed with no intention of repaying. We have surely asked the rats to protect our dry fish and handed our yams to goats for safekeeping! And we are wondering why and how the fish and the yam have vanished from the store!