It's been four months since the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) announced its nationwide strike. For more than 120 days, students of Nigerian federal universities have been unable to learn in classes. For context, 67% of the total number of undergraduate students in Nigeria attend federal universities.
This is not the first time this is happening. In 2020, ASUU went on a nine-month strike from March till December—its longest. Nine months is longer than an academic year. Each semester takes about three to four months, and there are two semesters each academic year. That means that for one academic year, students had no option of going to school.
So, in the last two years, from January 2020 till now, ASUU has been in session for only about a year—if we account for holidays.
Key takeaways:
- ASUU has been on strike for at least three months in the past three
It's insane that the government has allowed the strikes to linger for this long.
Yet it seems like the government is okay with it. Despite the uproar from students and several meetings between the government and ASUU, the end seems quite far away. Initially, the National Union of Nigerian Students (NANS) threatened to disrupt political gatherings until schools reopened. They conducted several protests across the country, but that didn't amount to much. It must be tiring for the students, though, to protest for their schools to be kept open without guaranteeing a solution.
It's business as usual for everyone but the students and lecturers whose lives have been put on hold due to the strike.
The sad thing about the whole strike situation is that even if the government resolves the reasons for the strike today, there's no guarantee that the lecturers won't go on strike again. As we wrote extensively in a previous article, lecturers have gone on strike every year except for six years since 1999. Time and again, ASUU goes on strike to protest the non-payment of dues to lecturers and the poor state of universities in the country.
Let's imagine that the federal government were to miraculously pay all the outstanding dues today (highly unlikely). As we shared in this article, the current state of the Nigerian government's finances and the difficulty with raising money to fund its budget makes it more difficult for the government to continuously meet the lecturers' demands—which may lead to another strike.
In light of this, students need to think of sustainable alternatives to the current federal education system that give them the same or even better results they desire—adequate skills and qualifications for a decent job. At the end of the day, students don't want education for its sake, but because of the skills and qualifications, they gain. Hence, students have started considering alternatives to education as they know it.
In this article, we'll focus mainly on three of such options: foreign education, private education and vocational and technical education.
Opportunities outside
Let's start with foreign education. While we're aware of Nigerians who are moving to several countries worldwide to study, we'll focus on Nigerians in the UK and US due to data constraints.
The quality of education in these countries is arguably better than in Nigeria—going by university ranking tables. Foreign university education also provides stability for students, albeit at a steep cost. Typically, tuition fees in public universities in Nigeria can cost as low as ₦30,000 (<$75 at the official rate) per year, compared to some universities in the US, which cost as low as $10,000 (over ₦4 million)—excluding accommodation and other living costs. This excludes many students who typically attend federal universities in Nigeria because of affordability. Although there are scholarship options that students can take advantage of, those are quite limited.
Now, is this an alternative many students have opted for in the past?
Those who can afford it have opted for travelling abroad. But the severe devaluation of the naira has made it more expensive to attend university abroad. Kunle (not real name), a graduate from a UK university, painted a visual picture of the hike in school fees abroad while speaking with Stears. "In 2015/16, I was paying about ₦6.5 million (£25,000) every year for my accommodation, pocket money, school fees and tickets to Lagos. Today, my brother is in university. Every year, we spend close to ₦20 million, compared to my ₦6.5 million", Kunle says.
This hike in the cost of education since the recession in 2016 caused many students abroad to return to Nigeria because it was becoming difficult to afford their education.
But let's see what the data is saying.
The UK witnessed a significant surge in student visas issued to Nigerians in 2021, showing that despite the high cost of education in the UK, many prefer this option. There are several reasons for this. First is that in July 2021, the UK re-introduced its post-study tier-4 visa, which it scrapped in 2012. The visa allows international students to stay in the UK for two years after their studies. Therefore students get the chance to stay back and possibly get jobs after graduation.
Scholarships are the second reason for the spike in student visas for Nigerians.
We see a similar trend in the US, as the number of students from Nigeria moving to the US to study doubled from 2010 to 2019. Again, the numerous scholarship opportunities and visa structure could be reasons for this.
Scholarship opportunities are particularly crucial for studying in these developed countries because the exchange rate is becoming increasingly costly to study abroad. In the past—the late 2000s and early 2010s, the gap between the official rate and the parallel market rates were negligible, and people did not mind receiving foreign exchange from black market sources. But the gap is much broader now.
With a wider gap between the official and black-market rates, we expect the demand from official sources to be wider, but that's not the case. The CBN recorded that the supply of foreign exchange for education has declined over the years.
But remember, this only shows a portion of demand for foreign exchange rates for education, as many still reach out to the black market for their dollars—which we cannot account for.
Beyond the issue of affordability, accessing foreign exchange for education has become more scrutinised than it typically would. Before, if you wanted to access dollars for school fees or pocket money, you had to fill a form in a banking hall, and in weeks you'll receive your dollars. However, that has changed slightly.
We all know the CBN does not play with its dollars and has done everything it can to ensure that people approaching the banks to receive funds for school fees are genuinely paying school fees and not using it as a guide to get foreign currency. Therefore the process of accessing foreign exchange has been reviewed repeatedly. Today, to get foreign currency for school fees, people are required to upload all the documents authenticating the school admission and school fees, after which they wait for about a month or so to get their foreign currency.
The current process takes much longer, and the risk of not getting the money as required is higher. This leads people back to the black market.
Even with the increased number of students going abroad to study, there might still be a capacity issue. The combined number of visas issued to Nigerians to study in the US and UK is not up to 100,000 per year. Granted, many other countries are providing visas to Nigerians worldwide. Still, they would most likely be insufficient to accommodate the one million+ students who require tertiary education yearly, which is why other alternatives are necessary.
Private universities alternatives
With foreign universities out of reach of Nigerian students, the next alternative might be private universities in Nigeria. Again, these have the advantage of stability over public universities. For example, I remember how the Occupy Nigeria protests in 2012—led to a significant shutdown of many economic activities across the country. However, that did not stop Covenant University from resuming school as usual. This is probably an extreme case, as many other private schools were shut at the time, but that shows how independent private schools can be in their decisions.
With private universities, students are better positioned to predict their futures because of the absence of strikes and external interruptions. Hence, it provides an alternative that solves the issue of constant strikes at a steep price. The typical annual tuition for a private school in Nigeria is about ₦500,000 per year($1,200), compared to the ₦50,000 ($120) in some of the most expensive public schools.
What is worse, these schools' tuition fees have also been increasing over the years. For example, Babcock University's tuition fee for accounting students increased from about ₦380,000 in 2015 to ₦560,000 in 2018, and today is ₦780,000 (more than double the price in six years).
This price increase is not exclusive to private education alone—it cuts across all aspects of the economy. As we showed in this article, inflation has eroded almost all aspects of the economy, reducing people's disposable income and leaving less for them to spend on education. The economic situation has made it an unlikely solution for many students who can't afford this education.
Another limitation of private universities is capacity. Most private universities can accommodate a maximum of 10,000 students, while public universities can accommodate as many as 45,000 students. As of 2019, there were over 70 private and less than 50 public universities. Yet, the private universities are not enough to make up for the capacity gaps from the public universities because even the public universities have limited capacity. Today, more than a million students are out of school due to the strikes; without room for students to be educated, the private university space cannot absorb the students who are currently out of school due to the strike.
Tech saves the day, again
But the strike hasn't been all bad for the Nigerian economy. Many students have steered to more productive activities, particularly in the tech industry. It's no news that the Nigerian tech ecosystem is one of the few things to be excited about in the Nigerian ecosystem. Among other benefits of the sector, it is currently a huge employer of labour.
Jobberman analysed more than 30,000 job listings and 1,000,000 job applications from July 2020 to July 2021 to form an assessment of the most desired jobs and the industries with the most openings. The report shows that IT & telecoms is the industry with the highest level of job supply (with 14% of listings) and the most sought-after sector by job seekers (12% of job applications).
Remember, education is not the end but the means to an end. The ultimate goal of education is to gain skills that position the graduates for quality jobs. Now, the Nigerian public education system has been faulted in this area for producing graduates who do not have the complete skills for productive jobs in today's world. So, even with the degrees students get, they either have to upskill themselves or get some form of training from the companies that hire them.
There are other alternatives to building the skills required for valuable employment in tech today. For example, many technical and vocational education and training (TVET) companies have started providing skills training to students at little to nothing, and Nigerian students are opting for this solution. When you think of technical and vocational education, companies training people in electric wiring or tailoring, tech training companies like Andela or AltSchool Africa don't immediately come to mind. However, that is changing now.
Now, vocational colleges like AltSchool work by training students and giving them a diploma, after which they attempt to link the students up with companies needing their skills. This is a valuable channel for education for students for two reasons: it provides practical and sought-after skills, and then it compresses the time students spend in school obtaining skills.
Typically, students spend about four years obtaining a degree, after which they have to up-skill themselves to position themselves for the high-paying jobs they need to succeed. The vocational colleges do both in a shorter time, and these benefits increase the appeal to students. Beyond the tech skills, these students learn, they also learn about entrepreneurship—equipping them with the requisite skills to start their ventures where they employ more people. The opportunities are endless.
In a conversation with Adewale Yusuf of AltSchool Africa, he mentioned that over 9,000 students applied for the Engineering college just launched last year, and about 4,000 were admitted. It's tough to say if the strike accounted for the mass application to AltSchool as it only began operations last year, but it won't be surprising if that was the case.
Although employers are becoming more flexible and open to employing people from different backgrounds without traditional degrees, not all employers would accept this. Afterall, the goal of the conventional degrees is beyond just giving students degrees but equipping them with soft skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration skills that they wouldn't otherwise have built over time. Hence, vocational training companies like The Bulb Africa take the route of training graduates who they then connect to organisations looking for tech talent.
While speaking with Stears, the program manager at The Bulb Africa, Raymond Akinfolarin, explained the rationale behind this approach. There's a general understanding that the average Nigerian employer has a bias toward employees that have gone through the traditional university system. So it's not just enough to have the skills. A university certificate remains a key signal to assuring future employers that you (the job seeker) are right for the role.
However, these vocational colleges have barriers to entry, such as having a laptop and quality internet. Again, we're reminded that many Nigerians are going through exceptional hardship because of the high cost of living, aggravated by inflation. With their disposable income shrinking severely, they might be unable to afford these basic requirements for entry.
Finally, another limitation of these vocational colleges is that they may not be able to accommodate these students. Most vocational colleges provide their solutions online. However, even online classes have their limits. Remember, over a million students are out of school today because of the strikes. That's not even including the many others that haven't gotten admission into federal universities, still because of this capacity issue.
But rather than see this as a challenge, we choose to see it as a growth opportunity for more vocational colleges to spring up. Most of Nigeria's population is between 18 and 29, and the current university system (public and private) can only meet 40% of the demand annually. The current demand for tertiary education is very significant.
However, like with many things the government should be responsible for in the country, young Nigerians have to create alternatives for themselves. The government fails to understand the severe impact of having more than 75% of the population seek education outside the public university system, where they battle with high costs and low capacity. Luckily, tech offers a potential solution that provides highly marketable skills in a short period. However, vocational education in tech is still riddled with challenges such as capacity and being a widely accepted replacement for university education.
Therefore, in the reality of constant ASUU strikes and an education system that paints an uncertain future for young people in Nigeria, we must deepen the solution of technical and vocational education with more players and a larger capacity.
