Abstract
The government of Nigeria recently initiated higher education policy reforms intended to bring its university system more in line with international good practices. The reforms promote increased institutional autonomy, greater system differentiation, strengthened governance, and mechanisms for quality assurance. They seek to create a more flexible and responsive system of university teaching and research that, over time, will contribute increasingly to national innovation capacities, productivity gains, and economic growth. This paper reports on the current status of higher education in Nigeria and reviews the country's new policy initiatives in this context. The discussion gives particular attention to issues of access, teaching/learning, finance, and governance/management.
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Notes
The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed herein are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to the institutions that employ them, or to their governing boards or affiliated organizations.
Data included in this paper are the best available, but may not always be reliable. Although the National Universities Commission provides a valuable service in periodically compiling and publishing higher education statistics, the reliability of these data depends on the accuracy and timeliness of university reporting, which vary considerably among institutions.
Nigeria's entire tertiary education system (federal, state and private) comprises 220 institutions: 17 federal universities, four federal universities of technology, three federal universities of agriculture, one national open university, four national centers for specialized tertiary instruction, 16 state universities, seven private universities, one military university, 17 federal polytechnics, 27 state polytechnics, seven private polytechnics, 22 federal teacher training colleges, 38 state teacher training colleges, four private teacher training colleges, 36 colleges of agriculture, 12 specialized training institutes, and four parastatal supervisory agencies. The government traditionally categorizes its federal universities into groups based on their dates of establishment, as follows: 1st Generation (Benin, Ibadan, Ile-Ife, Lagos, Nsukka, Zaria); 2nd Generation (Calabar, Ilorin, Jos, Kano, Maidugari, Port Harcourt, Sokoto); 3rd Generation (Abeokuta, Abuja, Akure, Akwa, Bauchi, Makurdi, Minna, Owerri, Umudike, Uyo, Yola).
In comparison, state university enrollments totaled 104,776 in 1997/98, effectively 28% of Nigeria's total university enrollments in that year (NUC, 2002b).
Projected expenditures for 2002 are approximately $260 million (Daily Trust, July 9, 2002).
The Education Tax Fund is financed by a 2% levy on pre-tax earnings of firms with more than 100 employees; half of these funds are earmarked for higher education.
A detailed analysis of Nigeria's substantial potential for the development of tertiary distance education is provided in Butcher and Wali (2001).
Authors' calculations based on 1997/98 data from the National Universities Commission.
Knowledge coalitions and similar types of collaborative institutional networking have been more extensively analyzed by Gibbons (1998) under the label of ‘mode 2’ knowledge generation.
During the 1970s, the University of Ibadan benefited from a 10-year institutional support program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, which was intended to make it a regional center of excellence. The Rockefeller evaluation of this program in 1979 concluded that Ibadan had the best-qualified staff of any university in Sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa (Coleman and Court, 1993).
Just 15% of academic staff were female in 1998, up from 12% in 1988 but proportionately far below the one-third female share of enrollments. In 1998, the highest percentage of female enrollment (46%) was found at the University of Nigeria (Hartnett, 2000).
This compares with an average staff/student ratio of 1 : 30 among the state universities (NUC, 2002b).
The nationwide incidence if HIV infection is estimated at 5.0%, but varies widely from one region to another. The relatively unsupervised concentration of sexually active young adults on university campuses creates fertile conditions for HIV infection rates above the national average.
Although petroleum exports account for nearly one-half of Nigeria's GDP, only one out of six programs in petroleum, mining and production engineering were awarded full accreditation. Although agriculture generates 30% of GDP, just five out of 38 programs in agriculture and forestry were fully accredited. Disciplines necessary for business development and economic management fared no better. For accounting, two programs fully accredited out of 17 reviewed; for banking, none out of 14; for business administration, four out of 20; for economics, none out of 26 (NUC, 2002a).
Insufficient funding has been compounded by inefficient management and an absence of strategic vision.
In this regard, Clark (2001, 14) has stated categorically, ‘Let us be clear: a high degree of financial dependence on a single mainline source is a flawed way to construct a self-reliant university.’
Tuition fees were once the norm, but were abolished in 1978 when windfall oil revenues created a temporary governmental largesse.
These efforts have been reinforced by similar strategic management initiatives at individual institutions, some of which have attracted grant assistance from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
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Acknowledgements
We express our appreciation to David Court and Richard Fennel for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Saint, W., Hartnett, T. & Strassner, E. Higher Education in Nigeria: A Status Report. High Educ Policy 16, 259–281 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300021
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300021