…University education is not meant for everybody as we have wrongly perceived it to be…
…Most of the students we are churning out recently have no business being in the university…
…Students do no longer see any value in the certificate they acquire as most students are graduating effortlessly without prerequisite knowledge of their core disciplines…
…It is only in Nigeria that parents/guardians pay more in training their wards in primary and secondary schools and pay less in university…
…In advanced countries, universities are very expensive and unaffordable to most of their citizens. This brutal truth as it may sound, is what is hidden to most Nigerians…
…The most oft- repeated Maxim that, ‘ if you think education is expensive , try ignorance ‘ must be contextualized…
…The more expensive the university becomes the more value and premium will be placed on it…
By Yunusa Abubakar
As painful and unsavory as the development is, we must stop gloating over it by gleaning at the other prism of the discourse. University education is not meant for everybody as we have wrongly perceived it to be. University education as it is run now in Nigeria is not in sync with the global practice.
It is only in Nigeria that parents/guardians pay more in training their wards in primary and secondary schools and pay less in university. The danger this portends is that we have been producing vibrant and cerebral students at the pre- tertiary schools but having them not consummated at the University level.
Our University students are not better than what they came to University with. My visits to most universities have been nauseating to my intellectual sensitivity as most messages etched by students are replete with grammatical and logical incorrectness.
Those students who attended high brow and expensive private schools are frustrated as the disparity in condition of learning is appalling to most of them, while those who attended mushroom and public schools are relishing over their imaginary state of the art facilities they see in our second class universities. This ugly situation breeds dissension and class dichotomy among the two classes of students. This is not the way to go. Where then do I see the light in this capitalist entrapment that we are now operating?
The answer is simple, parents must now save what they spend on their wards for functional University education. It is appalling that there are private primary and secondary schools that are charging between 500,000 – 1.5 million annually in this same country, yet our public universities are collecting peanut for University education.
This ugly incident is equally exacerbated by the intalmental payments most universities are forced to recourse to. We must prioritize our needs to reflect global practice of the 21st century.
Most of the students we are churning out recently have no business being in the university. This is a bitter pill that we must swallow.
As a parent I have realistically made up my mind that my children can only go to university only if they are intellectually inclined and sufficient to make a mark in their educational pursuit. Factoring what my investment in them and the expected result I will expect will determine the level they can go in school.
Today, University students are merely going there for the sake of social grandstanding, rather than having the passion for University education. The more expensive the university becomes the more value and premium will be placed on it.
The palpable and unsavoury economic predicament most Nigerian lecturers are sufficiently subjected to have morphed them into personalities with a price tag that can be bought with money. Students do no longer see any value in the certificate they acquire as most students are graduating effortlessly without prerequisite knowledge of their core disciplines.
Let us have a check on the quality of our recent graduates with no prejudice. The result is appealing and particularly miffing to our core being.
My position may seemingly appear controversial when factoring the time we all graduated. To appreciate my position, one must look at the time we graduated and the number of students we had in our universities then.
During our time education was almost free, yet the number was insignificant as compared to the humongous number we are educating and churning out today. The facilities are overstretched as hostel accommodation is no longer enough to accommodate the teeming population of our students.
We must historize and contextualize these two periods to have an informed position on this issue.
Did ASUU thrive in protecting the common interest of all stake holders in the educational sector?
My reasoned position is simple, they thrived in futility because of the inherent contradiction in their struggle. You cannot be teaching your students capitalist biased education and expect a welfarist living condition of service.
If the essence of education is situated in having the intellectual fibre to compete favourably in a capitalist world, then investment must start from the paying of exorbitant fees. The most oft- repeated Maxim that, ‘ if you think education is expensive , try ignorance ‘ must be contextualized.
What is the way out?
The problem is institutional, rather than individualistic. New historicism as a theoretical framework has posited that most societal problems are institutionalized and as such, we cannot change the narrative without changing the institutions that precursor the problems. In simple terms, it means that we cannot be operating institutions of government that is capitalist in contraption and be expecting welfarism from that same government.
Democracy is expensive, and democracy itself feeds on the superstructure of capitalism. With capitalism there is class consciousness that foregrounds the interest of the political leaders, comprador and businessmen. This explicates the reason for the proliferations of private universities by the ruling class in cohort with their business partners.
In advanced countries, universities are very expensive and unaffordable to most of their citizens. This brutal truth as it may sound, is what is hidden to most Nigerians.
The world is pushing towards skills acquisition, rather than certification as most universities globally are saddled with the responsibility of producing the best brains from the fewest of the few. This is the stark reality capitalism can abundantly offer as an ideology.
The demise of socialism and USSR has aggravated the plight of the poor or the have not. The world is no longer bipolar in ideology. Free education died with the demise of former USSR and Warsaw Park. We must shape up or we get shipped out.
We cannot continue to speak the language of the 19th century in a postmodern world of the 21st century. To change the system is to change the ideology that privileges capitalism as against socialism.
As long as capitalism exists, class struggle continues and as long as class struggle is premised the more the poor will continue to be poorer and the rich richer. We must swallow this bitter pills for us to live with our obvious limitation. One Love!