The management of Bayelsa State College of Arts of Science (BYCAS) has appealed to the Governor Seriake Dickson administration to upgrade the college to a polytechnic for more academic excellence.

Rector of BYCAS, Jeremiah Yabefa, made the appeal on Tuesday when officials of the Federated Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Bayelsa State Council, visited him in his office in Yenagoa.

He said the upgrading of the institution would attract more funding and enhance accreditation of more courses of study.

Yabefa said the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) had accredited only three major courses, including schools of Sciences, Engineering and Management, since its inception in August, 2012.

He said the college runs Diploma courses in Law, General Studies and IJMB programmes, stressing that its mandate was to build middle-level manpower for the state.

“The college has over 84 automated welding machines to take-off as a polytechnic and, over 80 sets of computers in the ICT laboratories”, Yabefa said.

The administration of former Governor Timipre Sylva had scrapped the BYCAS in 2008, but the Dickson government re-established it last year.