NIGERIA MASTERWEB DAILY NEWS

*Nigerian University System: Which Way Forward By Oyeols Akin The educational sector, and our university system in particular, has been brutalized for a few decades now. The most popular phrase emanating out of our education system recently has been “…ASUU has decided to embark on strike action to press home its demand for…” rather than news of any scientific or research break through! University education in Nigeria is really at its lowest ebb!! But is there no solution? Are we forever constrained to having a dysfunctional education system? I believe the answers are out there. The solution requires active participation from all the stakeholders, from the government, to ASUU, parents and students, the NUC and perhaps donor agencies and NGO’s. First of all, the government must begin to see education for its true importance to national development. Education is arguably the most important and strategic tool a country can equip its people with. Education is the knowledge of putting one's potentials to maximum use. One can safely say that a human being is not in the proper sense till he is educated. This importance of education is basically for two reasons. The first is that the training of a human mind is not complete without education. Education makes man a right thinker. It tells man how to think and how to make decisions. The second reason for the importance of education is that only through the attainment of education is man enabled to receive information from the external world; to acquaint him with past history and receive all necessary information regarding the present. Without education, man is as though in a closed room and with education he finds himself in a room with all its windows open towards the outside world. From the Senator at the National Assembly to the tyre mender on the streets, a good quality education is key. A good education has the capacity to lift a people out of poverty by equipping them with a means to making the best possible choices for their lives. A good education enables people to think imaginatively and creatively (which appears to be lacking in Nigeria, especially in public service), it enables them to act in more socially responsible ways, and make better decisions about their health. The poor quality of our education is partly responsible for so many of the socio-economic issues which pervade our country today. With a better education, maybe so many of the garage boys and touts we have on the streets wouldn’t be there today. They would be able to better make smarter decisions as to what to do with their lives. A better educated police would be able to think and act more proactively to prevent crime, a well educated school leaver would be able to identify career options available to him, without necessarily focusing on a white collar job. A carpentry shop owned by an uneducated folk who did local apprenticeship and a woodwork shop, owned by a well-educated man, equipped with modern tools, can never be the same. Even a well-educated taxi driver is not the same as the typical uneducated taxi driver. While a well educated one would be able to add value to the tourism drive of a country by also acting as a tour guide (the way they do in Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt), an uneducated one wouldn’t even see the connection. Nigeria cannot develop anywhere near its potential without having the majority of its population WELL educated. If only the government could truly realise this and see the importance of an educated populace, perhaps it would be willing to put more resources, financial and other wise, to ensuring the sector emerges from its present comatose state. Having said that, while our entire educational system needs to improve, from the primary right through secondary to the university, the focus of my article will be on the universities. There is no doubt that due to the decades of neglect, the financial resources required to return our universities to some semblance of sanity will be massive. And while we certainly do not have a poor government, the financial position of the government is not particularly buoyant. Yes, corruption in Nigeria is massive, but even in the absence of large-scale corruption; I am not convinced that Nigeria can really afford to give its ballooning population a free and qualitative education right now. Lets face it; what ever is good and high quality costs money and education is no exception. Unfortunately, because of the failure of past governments, any government in Nigeria now has a vast amount of things to spend money on and not enough money to spend. Examples are roads and transport infrastructure, power generating stations and related infrastructure, infrastructure for the Niger Delta, refineries etc. Lets also face it, even in the midst of producing 2 million barrels of oil a day, Nigeria is still a relatively poor country. 2 million barrels sounds like a lot, but with 150 million people!! Trust me, its not. We tend to compare Nigeria with Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Norway and some other oil producing countries. But the truth is that these countries produce a lot more oil than we do, with a fraction of our population. To put it in more perspective let me give the per capita income of these countries; Saudi Arabia $18,855, Brunei $37,053, Kuwait $45,920, Bahrain 27,248, UAE $55, 028, Norway $94,387 and Nigeria, with its 2 million barrels of oil per day - a paltry $1,401!! To put it in more perspective, South Africa that has no oil has a per capita income of $5,685!!! And these are countries that have largely sorted out their infrastructure problems and therefore do not need to spend so much on roads and electricity generation and the like. So is Nigeria really a RICH country? I don’t really think so! Therefore in as much as we would like to believe that Nigeria should be able to make education free, the way it might be in so many of these countries, I am not convinced that Nigeria can really afford it. Where am I going with this? I believe that our universities should be structured such that the government takes care of all capital expenditure (capex), which would be budgeted for, while the universities take care of all operating expenditure (opex), including salaries, from their own internally generated revenue. This will likely mean that university tuition would go up, but with the importance of a quality education, would it not be worth it to pay higher for a higher quality education? Like I said earlier, rarely is a thing of value and quality cheap. We often make references to “abroad” where education is free, but I wonder where exactly. I just browsed on the web and found that the average tuition fee for British citizens is about £3,200 (about N860,000), while in America, it is about $9,000 (1,350,000) for Americans. And while tuition in a few countries in western and central Europe is free, in some cases fees for accommodation, living expenses and books still exceed Eur1,000 and in most cases anyway, the governments of most of these countries are currently reviewing them. Besides these are also some of the most heavily taxed countries in the world. I am not saying our tuition should be at these levels, but at least let the universities themselves make the call as to how much to charge based on my suggested financial autonomy and their perception of the kind of quality education they deliver. If a particular university wants to pay its lecturers N800,000 a month, it will have to ensure that its internal revenue is capable of handling it. In fact, it is my belief that financial and political autonomy in the universities, along with disparate salaries based on financial capacity of the universities to pay (ASUU will not want to hear this), will actually enhance the university system by providing competition. This competition will force our universities to develop a value proposition to attract student and lecturers alike and will force the universities to better manage their resources. A university could put forward its academic excellence in engineering or its excellent sports facilities to students as its unique selling point. Another could sell its linkages to the private sector after graduation as its unique selling point in a bid to attract students. Likewise another could sell its appreciable research grants as a reason to attract quality lecturers. There should be a reason to seek to attend one university over the other. For now, the only perceived difference in quality of our universities is that some are federal, while some are state owned. Just a few days ago, I read an article in the papers suggesting that our universities lack proper management. I believe this totally. Our Professors and vice-chancellors are at best administrators, not visionaries. Though they are specialists in their field, most lack the all round management expertise to effectively manage the resources in our universities! In fact, with the current structure of our universities, where everything comes from the government, they are not really encouraged to do so. Indeed, not every Professor can effectively function as a Vice Chancellor! However, with political and financial autonomy, the governing council of each university would be hard pressed to elect a vice-chancellor that would deliver a really well managed and focused university. The universities are not primarily money-making institutions, but I am of the opinion that there is plenty of room for cost savings on the one hand and improved revenue generation on the other, if the VC’s think a little bit more creatively. Now, let it not appear as though I live in the clouds and have lost sense of all reality. No doubt, the generality of Nigerians are poor. For many, to afford the existing “cheap” tuition is a challenge, how much more to afford a tuition fee of 2 to 5 times that. I share that sentiment. However, I believe the university system is better served by support to the students themselves rather than to the university. Rather than make tuition unsustainably cheap, I would rather a situation where tuition is allowed to find its level, while the government, NGO’s and wealthy individuals support poor students who are unable to afford university education via bursaries, grants and scholarships. A quick check online indicates that tuition at Bowen University, a private university in Nigeria, is about N400,000.00, at Covenant University, it is about N480,000.00, while at Redeemers University, it is about N350,000.00. These are universities built from scratch. Therefore, if the structure earlier proposed was at play, where government universities cater for only their operating expenditure themselves, and considering that the physical structures are in most cases already in place, perhaps the tuition at our government universities might settle at anywhere between N100,000 and N150,000 for a session. Do the students and parents themselves have any role to play in all of this? Yes, they do. I believe students and parents alike have lost all sense of how important a good education is and the reason why they go to university. On the one hand, society is to blame. We have all grown up to believe that if a child does not have a university (or higher education) that such a child has no future. So much so, that we do everything we can to ensure our children get into university and obtain a degree, without giving much thought as to the quality of that degree. Yet, I know a number of people in Nigeria today, who are active in businesses totally unrelated to the courses they studied in university. If we really value a good education, shouldn’t we be willing to pay for it, even if it means giving up a few things? The Nigerian people are a very wasteful one. Even in the midst of poverty, we always seem to be able to find money to buy one union cloth (aso egbe or aso ebi) or the other, or to bury a parent that died years ago, or to organise a party or wedding ceremony in a bid to outdo the party a friend threw a few months back. These are all nice things, especially if the financial capacity is available, but largely irrelevant when there are more important things to invest in, such as a quality education for our children. Even our students have lost all sense of why they are in university. Perhaps they have lost hope in the usefulness of the degree in the outside world. In most cases, our graduates are not able to gain employment once they leave the university with their degrees. But the truth is that the quality of our education is so poor that our graduates are not really equipped and ready to fit into the corporate world and the outside world. Their minds have not been developed. They can barely use the computer effectively, they can barely speak good English and are barely any better intellectually than when they entered. As the old saying goes “one should go through university and allow university to go through him”. Unfortunately most graduates go through university, but university does not go through them. Many of our girls have turned to prostitutes on campus in order obtain money to afford vain things; expensive phones, clothes, shoes and bags, while many of the boys are cult members or strive to drive cars on campus and wear clothes that even their working brothers are not wearing. All misplaced priorities!! I recall that back in the day, many of our parents had to carry firewood, fetch water or hawk in the morning before they went to school and after they returned. That was a time when we valued our education. Our parents were prepared to give an arm and a leg to get an education then. Funny enough, when Nigerians go abroad to study, they are usually willing to work in Burger King, Mc Donald’s, ASDA and the like to earn money to support their school fees, in search of a valuable education. However our local students are not willing to sacrifice a bit more for their education. I am convinced that if most relatively poor students were given the option of working at the university car wash to earn an income to support their education, 90% would refuse, probably too embarrassed to do “such a job”. I guess this is because they get the impression that the available education offers little value and they therefore see no need to sacrifice for it. However, hopefully if the quality of our education improves significantly (and ultimately becomes more expensive), our students will be willing to do more to support their tuition fees. There is so much more that can be said about our higher educational framework. Although I have said a lot, I do acknowledge that my views are not meant to suggest that there is only one way forward for the development of our university system or that I have all the answers. I have however attempted to be as objective and dispassionate about the issue as possible, from all points of view. Therefore I will give a run down of what would be my main policy thrusts, were I saddled with the responsibility of re-structuring our university system 1. The universities should be given political and financial autonomy. Political autonomy is defined here as “giving the universities the power to elect its own vice chancellor and other principal officers”, while financial autonomy is defined to mean “ each university should be given the freedom to determine the salaries of its lecturers and other staff, based on their academic quality and what they bring to the table, subject to a minimum, as well as charge whatever tuition fees it deems appropriate and in general be responsible for financing its own operating expenditure”. 2. Government should continue to be responsible for capital expenditure in the universities as well as all research grants, as well as give operational grants from time to time to support the universities. 3. Government should put in place mechanisms whereby poor students are supported with scholarships, grants, bursaries and loans. 4. The universities themselves need to re-orientate their thinking. The current modus operandi of our university system, where everything falls from the government table, does not appear sustainable. Vice Chancellors should be visionaries, managers and leaders, not just administrators. 5. NUC should live up to its responsibility and effectively regulate the amount of student intakes based on available facilities as well as regulate the university system generally. 6. University education should be de-emphasised in favour of equally high quality technical and vocational education that empowers students to start their own business and do their own thing. Hopefully, one day very soon, the government, ASUU and other stakeholders, will sit down together and discuss objectively and chart a sustainable future for our education system. My fear though is the lack of trust. ASUU, based on our experiences of the 60’s and 70’s, will likely not listen to any claims that the government cannot afford to give Nigerian’s an equivalent 60’s education in 2010. Government is also likely to be too big headed to agree that it has been largely incompetent in the managing of the human capital of this country and admit that it has to and can still afford to do much more than it is currently doing, though maybe not as much as we expect. All parties must be able to find some middle ground. However, if we cannot get this restructuring done, then it will be doom for this country over the next decade and beyond, as educational standards fall further and Nigeria does not possess the manpower required to effectively compete in an increasingly global economy.