The Nigerian Education sector needs a total overhaul By Iyinoluwa Aboyeji ( Y! FrontPage) of April 16, 2013 6:30 am The effect of this problem is showing in the quality of our graduates and employment opportunities available to them and Nigerians who are very good at finding patch work solutions to pressing problems are already beginning to vote with their feet. For the last few weeks, I have been spending a lot of time trying to understand the crisis that is Nigerian education sector, its challenges and possible solutions. Now I won’t bore you with a preachy plaintiff-like sermon about Nigerian education. At this point, it is a foregone conclusion that Nigerian education – particularly Nigerian higher education – is in crisis. The most commonly cited statistic that illustrates the monstrosity of the problem at hand is the fact that out of the over one million young Nigerians who pass University entrance exams every year, the nation’s universities only have capacity for less than a third of this number. This is a problem – but we find much larger problems when we explore the plight of the lucky third who may still retain the diminishing hope of assuming the supposedly exalted position of “University graduates”. Many problem plague these Universities – public and private alike; insufficient funding, inadequate investment in labs and research equipment, insufficient research and teaching capacity, horrible living and learning conditions for students amongst several others. But I think the most unfortunate of all these problems is teaching quality and capacity. After all, past all the razzmatazz of colorful ceremonies, all a University really does is prepare young people to enter a workforce in need of productive, appropriately skilled markets who can create or add value to their scaled operations. The truth of the matter is that all of Nigeria’s 365 higher education institutions, public, private or otherwise, have a ticking time bomb with respect to teaching quality. The statistics tell an alarming story. Nigeria currently has a 40% shortfall in University teaching staff – especially in the areas of science and technology, which form the bedrock of any civilization. We will need 20,000 new lecturers to simply sustain the current numbers of Nigerian students in Universities all over the country at the moment. To make things even worse, over half of the current staff at Nigeria’s Universities are barely qualified to teach anything beyond introductory classes. The effect of this problem is showing in the quality of our graduates and employment opportunities available to them and Nigerians who are very good at finding patch work solutions to pressing problems are already beginning to vote with their feet. Nigerian students are spending over $5 billion studying abroad every year. What is most frustrating about this problem is that there is a validated solution for it, a solution that many Nigerians are already very familiar with and in fact use regularly. It is called the Internet. Contrary to the beliefs of many Nigerian youths, the Internet is not just for loafing around on facebook and twitter hailing “ogas at the top”. The Internet is a powerful tool for youths to access high quality education content so they can over come the obstacle of limited teaching quality they are confronted with at their Universities. The recent phenomenon of Massively Open Online Courses where top Universities have been compelled by startups like Coursera and Udacity to open up online courses taught by some of the most brilliant minds in various fields makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to access a high quality education on a budget of free. For the past few months, I have been religiously taking python programming courses on Udacity and the courses are unbelievably helpful even for a dolt like me that finds programming very tedious and difficult. There is validated demand in Nigeria for this kind of learning. Last year Nigerians spent $37 million dollars on online education content and this market is growing at an astronomical 23.3% per year. By 2016, we will be the second largest consumer of e-learning content after South Africa with projected revenues of close to $100 million I am not unaware of the challenges many Nigerian youths will have with taking advantage of the internet to do more than insult the government of the day via the cheapest Blackberry. For one, internet penetration even though it is reportedly accessible to 48 million Nigerians who make up 30% of the population still isn’t at the quality and price that makes it affordable for the average Nigerian. That said, the fact that this number is growing at 15% a year and the increasing number of ISPs popping up this year give me hope that this problem will soon be resolved. I remember reading the CEO of Main One tell an audience that we are currently just at 10% utilization of the fibre optic cables bringing brought into the country. This means there is still a lot of room for our telcos to grow capacity for broadband internet access at affordable prices. The Nigerian Communications Commission needs to work more closely with Universities – public and private – to ensure every Nigerian University student can access to broadband internet. A world without it is unthinkable for the future we are supposed to be preparing them for. The second problem, which I think is easier to solve is that the Nigerian University Commission still doesn’t acknowledge the validity of degrees earned online. As such it is difficult for Nigerian students and young professionals with access to the Internet to get accreditation for taking online courses – which are in many ways, cheaper and more effective than in class lectures. I think the Nigerian University commission needs rethink this policy. Making degrees earned online eligible for accreditation by Universities enables them to increase their revenues by serving more students without needing to invest in physical infrastructure, it also enables them to acquire course content cheaply from local and international so they can make more money on each student and provide a quality education at the same time. I will be remiss to end this article without recognizing the efforts of some Nigerian technology pioneers who are actively working on the problem of increasing quality and access to education for young Nigerians. Gossy Uwanoke of Beni-American University and Dr Anderson Uvie-Emegbo of GAPS Academy are huge inspirations for me in trying to find opportunities to move Nigerian higher education in the face of its multiple challenges and limited resources. Their pioneering efforts to revolutionize the higher education industry in Nigeria to expand access and increase quality will mean we can move beyond lamenting about what is wrong with Nigerian higher education and move the conversation towards what it will take to fix it.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:00:19 +0000
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