EDUCATION is about learning and teaching; and education policy is concerned with the ways in which learning and teaching are organised and delivered in order to ensure that all citizens have the appropriate opportunities to learn. It is in every sense, one of the fundamental factors of development. No country can achieve sustainable economic development without substantial investment in human capital.
It improves the quality of their lives and brings broad social benefits to individuals and society. Education raises people’s creativity and productivity. It promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. In addition, it plays a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution. This is the spirit and national ideals enshrined in Article 18 (1) of the 1999 Constitution that the “Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end Government shall, as and when practicable, provide… free university education.” Unfortunately, the key caveat of “as and when practicable” has been ignored. At the present moment, free university education is just not practicable, affordable or sustainable!
Improving the standard of our tertiary education would require a huge investment of funds – both for capital (infrastructural) and academic/teaching development. These are straitened economic times. At the best of times, tertiary education has remained grossly underfunded, indeed, neglected for years to the point where those who could afford it, now send their children to universities outside Nigeria’s shores. As recently as 2010, there were 38,850 Nigerian students in universities in the U.S., UK, Canada, Malaysia and Ghana (Source: UIS GED) at an estimated annual cost of over N77 billion. As at today, there are 147 universities in Nigeria, with 46 of them under Federal control, 40 state and the remaining 61 are private universities.
Almost the world over, in order to meet the growing standard of quality education and be able to compete in the global education ranking, there has been a general recognition that the government alone cannot sustainably provide the huge funding that is required. Imagine that in the 2015 education budget, a paltry N234 billion was allocated to 44 Federal Universities (N232 billion Recurrent and only N2.2 billion for Capital expenditure). Virtually all the universities had a N40 million (equivalent $200k) Capital allocation. What on earth can N40 million capital allocation do in UNILAG as an example? It can’t even pay for two GE Volution Ultrasound Machines for the use of medical students! There is also a recognition that access to quality university education shouldn’t be the exclusive preserve of a few wealthy individuals who could afford it. This, therefore, calls for an innovative, strategic road map for the resuscitation of an inclusive and sustainable education system in Nigeria. The cost of higher education is high and one does not want to unwittingly exclude a large percentage of the population with high potential from acquiring university education simply because they cannot afford it.
The immediate and long term solution to this problem is the setting up of a National Student Loan Trust Fund which allows our universities and polytechnics to charge up to N250,000 for tuition per student, per annum. The average university has a student population in excess of 30,000 in any given year. Using the University of Lagos as a guide, this equates to an immediate funds inflow of about N11billion annually to the university, with a student population of 45,000. The Table below shows the estimated typical annual maintenance and tuition cost in a university. The red column shows the desired/ideal costs which would enable our undergraduates to face their studies, especially the girls, not to prostitute themselves for money, as is the case at the moment and provide the universities with the necessary funds for education improvement. At this rate, a student on a four-year course, collecting all the living allowances and tuition, would be owing about N2.7 million at the end of his/her course.
Eligibility for the loan should be means-tested and should be for those students from families with less than X amount of family income to ensure that those who genuinely need the loans get them. The idea is that the loan carries an interest rate of a certain percentage over the CBN base rate and is paid off over a 15-year period after a year’s grace after completion of the compulsory National Service.
Every country, either developed or developing, finances her education system with many factors taken into consideration. Some of these factors are, principally, the nature of the economy, the ideological perception of the country, the philosophy behind the education system and the values that a particular society attaches to education vis-a-vis national development. Ghana launched their Students Loan Trust Fund in 2005 and now we wonder why Ghana’s education standard soared in the mid-2000s and why Nigerians send their children there in droves. In the UK, since September 2012, in response to the challenging economic situation in the country, the new coalition government there allowed the universities to charge home students up to £9,000 (>N3m) per annum in tuition and every student is entitled to the national student loan.
In the words of Nelson Mandela (1994) “only mass education … would free my people, that an educated man could not be oppressed because he could think for himself”. Mass education is the long-term solution to Nigeria’s development goal. However, free tertiary education is not sustainable, especially now that Nigeria is most at risk from the U.S. Shale oil, which pumps similarly light, sweet oil as Nigeria’s Bonny Light oil. We have already lost the U.S. market to Shale oil, with its exports falling from more than one million barrels per day to nothing; now we will face U.S. competition in Europe and Asia, too. The establishment of a National Student Loan Trust Fund offers us an affordable and sustainable solution whilst also allowing the government to manage its limited resources prudently amongst other competing development priorities.
Among the many advantages of establishing a National Student Loan Trust Fund in Nigeria are the opening up of higher education opportunities to every Nigerian that has the academic ability, irrespective of economic background; the provision of the much needed funds to finance quality education development; opportunity to attract funding support into the education pot from other international and local sources; opportunity to incentivise corporate organisations through tax allowances by contributing to the fund; and the freeing up of funds from the Federal Government in the long term to finance other competing development programmes. For these reasons and many more, I sincerely hope the new administration of President Muhammadu Buhari will be bold enough to think outside the box and consider this new funding route for the improvement of our education system.
• Olukiran is CEO, Institute of Voluntary Sector Management.
