ABSTRACT
Health care education is a dynamic system that responds to global standards and regional needs to deliver high-quality and cost-effective academic programs. The history of health care education in Nigeria is well documented in the literature, but the recent developments remain undocumented. Due to the national shifts in academic benchmarks and policies, the training of health care professionals in Nigeria, has also changed significantly. Unfortunately, the changes remained unknown to the rest of the world. This chapter analyzes the major developments in Nigeria’s health care education in the past ten years. The significant changes include overproduction of professors, collegiate system of university administration, incoherent college nomenclatures, upgrade in admission requirements into medical and dental programs, transition of the entry-level education in pharmacy, optometry, and physiotherapy to the doctoral level, the establishment of specialized health sciences universities, and development of fellowship programs in several disciplines. Other evolutionary events include the significance of the inaugural lecture, raising the academic bar for faculty promotion, increased research productivity and controversies surrounding the selection of university leadership.
