K BOLANLE ATI-JOHN urges the country to move from establishing university as status to education as capability
There is much in the federal government’s emerging education reform agenda that deserves acknowledgement. The renewed emphasis on technical and vocational education, Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM), student financing, education data, innovation and quality assurance reflects an important recognition by the Tinubu administration: Nigeria’s education system cannot remain detached from the economic, technological and demographic realities reshaping the country.
Perhaps even more significant was government’s decision last year to halt the proliferation of new tertiary institutions. The reasons were sobering. Education Minister Tunji Alausa disclosed that 199 universities received fewer than 100 applications through JAMB in the preceding admission cycle, while 34 received none. In one federal university, he said, roughly 1,200 staff serve fewer than 800 students. Government was confronting an uncomfortable truth: multiplying institutions is not necessarily the same thing as expanding meaningful educational opportunity.
It is precisely because these reforms point in the right direction that the moment invites a deeper question: what should determine whether Nigeria needs another university?
