ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION COMPANION NOTE ON NIGERIA

Objectively, what is called for is a model of rationalization across the educational system in which the government declares its endorsement or otherwise of education as a public good. A developing country like Nigeria can ill-afford to leave market forces to decide its educational destiny especially with the growing role of the private sector at the lower rungs of the ladder evident in the mushrooming of private nursery and primary schools without explicit rules on civic responsibility.

ADEREMI MEDUPIN

UNICEF’s Overview as Context

In its ‘Education Stories and News’ series, the UNICEF, in full originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide, its Nigeria Office, has a graphic illustration of the state of education in Africa’s largest economy. The imposing challenge, according to the global body is that, “one in every five of the world’s out-of-school children is in Nigeria”. It notes:

Even though primary education is officially free and compulsory, about 10.5 million of the country’s children aged 5-14 years are not in school. Only 61 percent of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 percent of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education. Yet, all children, no matter where they live or what their circumstances, have the right to quality education.  In the north of the country, the picture is even bleaker, with a net attendance rate of 53 percent. Getting out-of-school children back into education poses a massive challenge.

According to the global agency, gender, like geography and poverty, is an important factor in the pattern of educational marginalization. States in the north-east and north-west have female primary net attendance rates of 47.7 percent and 47.3 percent, respectively, meaning that more than half of the girls are not in school. The education deprivation in northern Nigeria is driven by various factors, including economic barriers and socio-cultural norms and practices that discourage attendance in formal education, especially for girls. Invariably, such children are destined to stay locked in cycles of disadvantage and poverty. Incidentally, under the Sustainable Development Goals, the blue print for progress the whole world has agreed, we are committed to give all children an inclusive and quality education by 2030. This recalls our earlier piece on this platform in which attention was drawn to the need for Nigeria to score more on SDGs and HDI.

Forging a link between school dropout and unemployment on one hand with the number of youth engaging in banditry, kidnapping and all sorts of crimes cannot be a rocket science endeavor as it is manifestly glaring. Interestingly, somehow, the Nigerian tertiary education system is reputed to be the biggest and most complex in Africa. More than half of the continent’s tertiary institutions are located in Nigeria. The National Universities Commission (NUC) is the major accreditation and regulatory body that enforces uniform standard and sets admissions capacity of every university in Nigeria. Without doubt, the importance and relevance of education cannot be overemphasized.

Power of Education

I think it was Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, who opined that the difference between a person who is educated and the other who is not, is like comparing the living and the dead-as graphic illustration of the critical status of education in human affairs.  A speech delivered at the 2017 Education World Forum advanced the key point that “the benefits of education are societal and personal”, constituting the most empowering force in the world. It creates knowledge, builds confidence, and breaks down barriers to opportunity. For children, it is their key to open the door to a better life. As eloquently clarified on the website of University of the People, the benefits of education are many. Not only will you personally benefit from receiving education when it comes to income, career advancement, skill development, and employment opportunities, but your society and community receive benefits of education as well. Those who get an education have higher incomes, have more opportunities in their lives, and tend to be healthier. Societies with high rates of education completion have lower crime, better overall health, and civic involvement. Lack of access to education is considered the root of poverty. Not getting an education can lead to a cycle of poverty. However, access to education can mean getting out of that cycle. In more specific terms, education engenders the following:

• Healthier lifestyle: People with better education tend to live longer and have healthier lifestyles. According to research, people with higher education have a one-third lower risk of heart disease. Degree holders are also less likely to smoke and more likely to get regular exercise.
• Opportunity to grow as an individual, experiment with what you are passionate about, and find yourself. You will be exposed to a diverse set of people and ideas which expand the mind- thanks to the new world of digital education with facility to transcend national borders.
• Provides students with the space and the opportunities to meet like-minded individuals, either on a peer or mentor basis. In school, students meet leaders in their field, top professionals, and make contacts through extracurricular activities as well.
• Effective pursuit of one’s vision: Education gives you the space to do so. In addition, you may find new passions or new areas of interest within your field of study-engendering self-fulfillment.
• Personal development of skills: Students ending up with a wonderful skill set that translates into the workforce- in form of improved communication, critical thinking, and sense of discipline.
• Employability and access to more jobs.
• Career entry advancement: Higher education gives the training and skills necessary for success in a specific area. In addition, many positions require a degree for entry. Some may not even look at a resume where the applicant has no degree.
• Economic growth: When an entire society is educated, productivity increases, average income increases, and unemployment decreases. This leads to the economic growth and stability of a society as a whole. It starts with education which among other benefits translates to higher income.
• Good citizenship and civic involvement: Those with an education tend to be more aware of current political issues, and are more likely to vote. It generally leads to reductions in crime, gender-based violence, and child marriage.

For all these and more, the rising demand for education registers as rational.

Demand for Education in Nigeria

As captured by a scholar, the demand for tertiary education in the country is high because it is not only an investment in human capital, but also a pre-requisite for sustainable economic development as well as a source of a rich and meaningful life. According to the National Universities Commission (NUC), by the first quarter of 2021, there were 2.1 million students studying in Nigerian Universities; a figure which is a little higher than what it was in 2017 when the number was put at 1.7 million undergraduate students and 234 thousand postgraduate students. Nigerians’ thirst for education is reflected in their exploration of foreign lands for the essential facility. According to the online platform, Nairametrics, a review of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) data suggests Nigeria’s educational sector has suffered massive capital flight over the years. Specifically, using the CBN’s balance of payments statistics, Nigerians spent a hefty sum of $28.65 billion on foreign education over the 10-year period, 2010 to 2020. Needless to say, the high demand for dollars to pay these foreign educational institutions has affected the country’s foreign reserve and contributed immensely to piling pressure on the exchange rate.

On the supply side, between 1948 and 1970, six universities were founded in the country; all of them were federally owned. Then the States joined the race for establishing universities. Over the subsequent decades, the number of universities founded in the country increased considerably. Additionally, during the last 20 years, the number of private universities grew significantly-such that by 2021, there were 170 Universities in the country- shared by ownership as shown below:

Ownership structure of Nigerian Universities

It is pertinent to note the relatively dynamic nature of the statistics on tertiary education in the country given the ongoing conversion of some Colleges of Education into Universities in some States and the federal government’s plan to turn Polytechnics into campuses of adjoining Universities. What is relatively more constant is the growing number of private universities.

The Rise of Private Universities

As already alluded to, the federal and state governments were previously the only bodies licensed to operate universities. Over time, however, licenses have been granted to individuals, corporate bodies and religious bodies to establish private universities in the country. A set of mutually reinforcing developments are identifiable to be responsible for the sprouting of private universities in Nigeria, notably: inadequate funding of public universities, the unceasing rise in the demand for tertiary education, the triumph of neoliberal ideology globally with preference for private service provisioning on ideological and practical arguments, and the misconception among private economic agents as to the essence of education beyond profit making.

While not having Nigeria specifically in mind, the words of Victoria Sit echo [ref her: “The erosion of the University as a Public Sphere”, in MR Online- January 26, 2008] echo- to the effect that:

In the interest of promoting individual and economic freedom, neo-liberal states have simultaneously deregulated and reduced the role of government in various sectors, giving power to the free market to allocate goods and services.  The university has historically been exempted from this process based on the widely accepted notion that higher education is a public good with benefits accruing to the whole community and, as such, should be funded by the government However, with the rise of knowledge capitalism, where knowledge and highly skilled human capital are the ascendant means of production, turning control and ownership of public universities over to the free market has become a priority for the government and businesses.  Consequently, a comprehensive system of policies and programs has been used to re-orient the goals of universities toward the market and also to impede their ability to uphold their commitment to democratic values.  The transformation of the functions of post-secondary institutions in turn promotes an argument that higher education is a private good, bringing added legitimacy to the neo-liberal ideology.

As the pressure on education sector rises and the challenge of requisite supply response heightens, its inherent quality acquires added significance as the concept and challenge of the employability of the products of its institutions take front burner in popular consciousness. Then, there arises the issue of funding which inevitably assumes the form of cost-benefit calculation.

Educational Financing Gaps and Options

Our basic premise is that investment in education is one of the bedrock of society and helps determine the level of development recorded in an economy.  Earlier, we alluded to the fact that education, besides rendering the private benefits of increased income and lifestyle to the individual, generates benefits (positive externalities) which spills over to society. It thus generates societal benefits which is important to be considered by the government for deciding the extent of its own direct involvement and/or its indirect role in terms of policy formulation and regulation. Sometime in December 2021, Olabisi Deji-Folutile, a member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, while speaking through Premium Times on the topic: “Funding education: A case of no money or no interest?”, made a brilliant comparative analysis of the funding morass in the country’s education where he drew attention-starting from the basic level-to how relevant stakeholders have performed or failed to perform as required on the challenge of funding and noting how:

Sweden spends $ 11,400 per student, from primary to tertiary education, and devotes 7.3 per cent of its GDP to education. This funding goes to both public and private educational institutions. No wonder the country enjoys a 81.5 per cent employment rate for all levels of education. In the same vein, South Africa spent R246 billion or 16.7 per cent of total government resources on basic education programmes in 2018/19. Overall, the country spends more than 20 per cent of its resources on basic and higher education and its combined education spending is more than 6 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

 Two interrelated factors have been widely fingered as accounting for the observed overall decline in Nigeria’s public education sector, namely: inadequate funding and improper utilization of provided funds. No one denies the fact that Government spending in the sector is relatively small when compared with other African countries. Of course, the issue of funding is one of the major areas of industrial conflict between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) resulting in prolonged strikes and cessation of studies by students who, not facing bright employment prospects on graduation anyway, are in effect subject to double psychological stress. The society appears to have literally put an end to scholarship schemes that served as breathers for the earlier generations of tertiary level education students in the country. So, what can be done?

Pointers to the Future

This is not the venue for an extended debate on the issue of the quality of the products of the old and emerging universities in Nigeria; suffice to make the observation that it takes time to produce required caliber of staff-especially the academic bracket-to meet uncoordinated rise in the number of new institutions in a system. In this vein, we may need to contextualize an online observation to the effect that:

Federal Universities are hot cake amongst admission seekers, this is so because they offer one of the best lecture rooms, laboratories, research centers although this is not surprising because federal universities receive more funding than state universities . . . It’s also on record that the number of professors in federal universities dwarf that of state and private universities. Without being told federal universities are cheaper in terms of school fees, acceptance fee and hostel accommodation. In terms of popularity all federal universities are popular and this is evident in the huge number of candidates that struggles for limited space each year through their admission process.

The suggested cautionary reception in context to this elaborate submission is against the backdrop of the reality of industrial crises afflicting public universities resulting largely from poor funding.

Objectively, what is called for is a model of rationalization across the educational system in which the government declares its endorsement or otherwise of education as a public good. A developing country like Nigeria can ill-afford to leave market forces to decide its educational destiny especially with the growing role of the private sector at the lower rungs of the ladder evident in the mushrooming of private nursery and primary schools without explicit rules on civic responsibility.

Most immediate is perhaps the need for a sincere summit of stakeholders embracing all sub-sectors of the education sector where strategic issues of funding and national needs will be tabled and perspectives harvested for coherence in the long-term interest of the nation within the framework of sustainable development. One critical factor to take on board should be that it cannot be business as usual in Nigeria’s education currently ravaged-as other sectors-by corruption. The point being underscored here is the need to put in place measures that will ensure that funds funneled into the education sector are properly utilized-not mismanaged or pilfered. Also, investment in education should not be viewed from the same typical business prism of profit-making; education is first and foremost about national development through manpower upgrade. In the same vein, the quality of instructors across the tiers of education must be accorded the foremost attention it deserves-for, as the popular saying goes: You cannot give what you don’t have. I come in peace, please.