The Fallacy in “Skills Rather Than Just Degrees” By Bello Mahmud Zailani

Recently, the phrase “skills rather than just degree” has dominated the academic debate in Nigeria, giving birth to auxiliary debates that propagate abolishing grades in the school system.

The crux of these debates is the insufficiency of earning just a degree in the modern advanced clime without having the complementary skills to compete in a highly competitive job market. While the debate has been around for a long while, the recent debacle could be traced back to a book published by Professor Isa Ali Pantami first published in 2022. With due respect for Professor Pantami being an excellent and distinguished Islamic scholar and a notable national figure having served the nation for almost a decade, he falls short in expressing a high level of acumen in academia. His below-par academic portfolio and misrepresented ideas like ‘skills rather than just degrees” threaten the academic community’s integrity, soiling the thinking of the susceptible young Nigerians, especially young academics.

The fallacy in the argument lies in its misrepresentation of the value of academic certificates (degrees) as some glorified piece of paper that has no worth without complementary sets of skills. While this might sound like a strong argument to the fickle mind, a deep sense of reasoning would deduce that the argument negates the value of what the certificate represents. By literal definition, certificates certify the attainment of certain knowledge and skills attained through a specifically designed training program. Ideally, one should not be awarded a certificate without an objective assessment to certify that one has acquired the requisite knowledge and skills. By this, the more reasonable argument should be that degrees, knowledge and skills are not mutually exclusive but rather a 3-piece pack. In essence, skills are pragmatic expressions of knowledge attained through a degree program.

All degree programs have designed curricula that are targeted at providing specific knowledge to build relevant skills. For instance, a lawyer is trained to understand complexity, build interpersonal relationships, and be fluent in their communication as part of their training. So the expectation is that a law degree certifies that the holder is trained and skilled in that regard, without having to enrol in a communications workshop or read a book on emotional intelligence post-degree to gain those skills. Failure to express those skills only exposes a deficiency in the training process or malpractice in the process that certified the person without having attained the requisite knowledge and skills needed to be certified. It does not in any way assert the binary superiority of skills over degrees.

One might wonder why Professor Pantami’s “skills rather than just degrees”, and arguments about abolishing grades in schools being propagated by another Professor of title, Ahmed Adamu have gained so much traction. Well, my best guess is it is at best a cheap attempt to blur the lines between due process and absolute disregard for academic excellence as a measure of competence. The argument opens a back channel to climbing the metaphorical “social ladder” without the requisite merits. On the premise of the argument, one can get into a position or become an authority in a field they do not necessarily have certified knowledge as long as they have acquired the necessary “skills”. Again, this negates the fact that skills are expressions of knowledge, and degrees certify knowledge. Therefore, anyone who expresses skills from knowledge that is not certified by a reputable institution is nothing but a “quack” in the field. This is a general rule of thumb, isn’t it?

So the debates about skills and abolishing grades set to enable quacks to push the false narrative that skills are mutually exclusive from degrees, allowing them to take on positions of authority over those that have certified merit. No holder of a certain degree should lack the requisite knowledge and skills that the degree certifies. An honest person who went through a functional degree training program should have the requisite knowledge and skills that the degree certifies. Relatedly, this is where grades come in. The rationale is that some students are better than others, and thus grades distinguish the extent to which one has acquired the requisite knowledge and skills the degree certifies. On a level ground, all who have earned the degree should have the requisite knowledge and skills, however grades show the distinction.

If we cannot distinguish the ‘wheat from the chaff’ then we are more likely to be fed more chaff than wheat. Interestingly, it is the wheat seller who has more chaff than wheat that peddles this debate in a cheap attempt to level the playing ground to compete with sellers having more wheat than chaff. Little wonder that the champions of this debate have very little to show for their academic careers. Their hunger and desire for titles have deviated from the true essence of academia and the pursuit of academic excellence. Pantami had to backchannel his way into becoming a Full Professor with very little credibility, while Ahmed Adamu is still not quite sure if he is an Associate Professor or a Full Professor, using the titles as if they are synonymous. There are no two ways about it. Only a mischievous academic “quack” choosing to shy away from the actual problem would blame the lack of complementary knowledge and skills amongst young graduates in Nigeria on the attainment of “just degrees”.