When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced the Student Loan scheme, I was super excited. This is the kind of innovation and support the common man has been craving for, for years. The effect of having access to fund one’s education (for everyone) will resonate for years to come, not only in the current dispensation. But I have a suggestion for a better way for it to be implemented. Hear me out.
I’m a product of the Nigerian University system and there is a worrying pattern in the process that admits students into our higher institution. There is a common answer to the question “what course are you going to study”, which is generally asked when you get admission into a tertiary institution and you share the news with your friends.
The answer goes along the lines of “I was given…..”, “They gave me…”. “They” in this scenario, Is the admitting institution. Most students get admitted into courses they have zero interest in. Or courses they think they can use as a stepping stone to the real course they are interested in. Students who want to study Law end up in the English dept. Students who want to study Medicine end up in Microbiology or Biochemistry dept. Students that want to study Engineering end up in Physics dept. And the list goes on and on. Hence the phrase “they gave me” rather than “I have been admitted to study…”
Invariably, a large majority of these students end up retaining the course they were admitted to and never get a chance to change to the course of their dream. There are two possible reasons for this;
One, the general culture is that you must go to a University/higher institution to make anything out of your life. (There is a case for and against this.)
Two, The stigma of “my mates already got admission into Uni but I’m still at home”. Every parent in your neighborhood who has a child in a higher institution will look at you as a failure
The downside of this is most students end up going through years of study without having the zeal to actually learn the course but rather do all it takes to just about pass the course and leave the institution. It is hard enough to learn something you are interested in, talkless of something you have no interest in.
A lot of times, you just read all through the night, memorize (cram) as much as you can, the night before the exam and hope what you memorize is part of the questions in the exam. The majority of students indeed matriculating know from the day of matriculation that they will never practice the course they are going to study. I have 7 friends/mates from Uni that studied psychology and to date, never practiced anything relating to psychology. And that is not an isolated case.
It is understandable that the experience you gain from going to a higher institution, regardless of the courses you studied, is priceless, and it’s an integral part/reason for attending the institution itself. However, the effect of that experience becomes insignificant if the students are not actually learning what they are paying to learn. This also has a massive effect on the kind of graduates we produce and how it helps (or not) the economy. It is well documented that the country is heavily dependent on oil and it will be useful to have other sources of export to boost the GDP.
Courses that help Agricultural products, Engineering, Information Technology (IT), to name a few will benefit the country in the long run. Philosophy is a fantastic course and Professors of Philosophy are all well respected all over the world. But haven’t said that, I don’t think the country really needs 1 million Philosophy graduates yearly, against 20,000 Engineering graduates, for example.
Something has to be done to bring the number to, say, 1 million Philosophy graduates, and 800,000 Engineering graduates. You know, something close. This brings me back nicely to the student loan conversation.
I think the country will benefit more if the loan (or maybe even a scholarship?) is directed to courses that will help boost the economy quickly. Good courses that traditionally have a low student count.
A panel can be set up to easily identify these courses. Just survey recent graduates, find out what they study at Uni, and if they are practicing it today. It will be glaring that 90% of graduates of some courses don’t practice it after graduation, while 90% of graduates of some courses actually practice the course they studied after graduation. I found out (shockingly so) that India made more money selling software than Saudi Arabia made selling oil in 2021.
The figures are $133 billion vs. $113 billion. If a free coding academy is set up in every state for fresh high school leavers (between age 14 and 17), the effect on the economy will be massive over the next 10 years or so and we probably will be producing millions of software developers/Engineers yearly, because luckily, the country is blessed with numbers (Computer village in Lagos is an example of what our youths can do, IT/Technology wise).
Big IT corporations like Google and Microsoft will be forced to bring their business to Nigeria and probably establish a major branch in the country like they did in India and China. Setting up these coding academies will also reduce the pressure of “you must go to a university to succeed in life” on the youths and give them other ways to make something with their lives. This is just an example. There are other good innovations that I’m sure we can come up with as a nation.
Generally speaking, I don’t think it’s in any way beneficial to the economy to give a loan to a student who is going to an institution to study a course he/she has zero interest in, and he/she has no intention of pursuing a career in the said course.
I think it will be a waste of funds. We already have enough graduates selling wigs and lightening creams on social media. The last thing we owe the new generation is to bring more of them into that space.
Oshakuade wrote from the UK .
