Late last year, Mr. Brian Wilson, Programmes Director at British Council, revealed at an education exhibition that 18,000 Nigerians were pursuing various undergraduate and post-graduate courses in Britain. I believe that the figure will have risen since he made this revelation. Apart from the British Council, education exhibition, education fairs – or whatever name we may choose to call it – has become a regular feature in Nigeria because of the near total collapse of our system.
This may be mere figures until we do the maths then we will realise how dare our situation is. Remember also that we are talking here about just one country out of a host of others that Nigerians go in search of education. Let’s take £30,000as the average amount spent by a Nigerian studying in the UK. The figure in Naira at an exchange rate of N250 would be N7.5million. If we multiply £30,000 by 18,000, it boils down to £540,000,000. Convert £540,000,000 to naira and you get N135billion. However, it is worth pointing out that this figure does not include money spent on training countless Nigerian children enrolled in secondary schools in the UK.
Apart from the UK, more Nigerians are also studying at various institutions in virtually every country across the world. Collectively, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are also studying in Canada, Germany, US and elsewhere.
To me, the irony of the whole situation is this: Nigerians lampoon their country as a place where nothing works and a country without a future. But it is from this same country that the funds to sponsor students abroad come from. I know quite a couple of Nigerians who fund their home mortgages abroad from the money they earn in Nigeria, some even have families doing nothing abroad who are catered for with money earned from the home front. Can you imagine what would happen if this fund is injected into our local economy? However, this is issue for another day.
A combination of factors lead to this precarious position we find ourselves in. Brian Wilson echoed the minds of millions of Nigerians, when he advised the Federal Government to do more toward improving the standard of education in Nigeria. With more than 129 Universities offering less than 300,000 slots in a country where over one million candidates seek placements every year, many anxious parents with enough funds have been persuaded to seek alternative placements for their wards in foreign Universities. Some, after many years’ attempt to gain admission to a local university proved futile choose this option while others migrated because they could not scale the UME, and post UME hurdle.
However, where a particular parent sends his or her wards to depends on acombination of factors. While Universities in the United States of America (USA), Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) are considered relatively safer for Nigerian students, the required fees are beyond the reach of many. Many American Universities charge foreign students about $40,000 (N6.2million @ N155:$1) yearly, while foreign students in United Kingdom’s Universities cough out about £30,000 (N7.86 million) annually, depending on the course of study.
The cost is far less in countries like Malaysia, UAE, India, Ukraine, Cyprus and Ghana among others, where foreign students get to pay about half of what they would have coughed out in western tertiary institutions. This attraction, coupled with the relentless education fairs organised by Asian and East European countries, with the help of Nigerian “partner” firms always generate huge interests. In such fairs, many parents are hoodwinked about security, social and other issues in the respective countries thereby leading them into taking poorly informed decisions that in some sad cases has led to the loss of their loved ones.
Education tourism – which has grown in the last couple of years – is the marketing and sale of a product or service which main purpose is to disseminate knowledge, in one form or another. It involves the collection of knowledge, both local and specialised, from which a well-defined product is created, which is then developed and marketed. Even the most casual observer would have noticed how Nigeria is now one huge ‘untapped market’ for education marketers.
Mr. Iain Stewart, a conservative member of the British parliament, was quoted by a British Council Report published a few years ago as saying that by 2015 the number of Nigerian students studying in British universities will reach 30, 000 and would constitute seven per cent of the entire university student population in the United Kingdom. Stewart went on to say that this is significant and, that Britain should make the most of the opportunity.
The report said: “Calculations are based on a number of factors including the poor quality of Nigerian universities and the rapid growth in the number of families that can afford to send a child overseas to study.” Britain, for one knows this and they did their homework thoroughly. They knew that the growth and prominence of both tourism and education as key industries over the past few decades has led to growing recognition of these sectors from both an economic and social perspective.
It may also be argued that developments in the tourism industry during this time, allied to changes in education, have seen the convergence of these two industries. Education increasingly enables or facilitates travel mobility and learning has become an important part of the contemporary tourist experience.
In this unprecedented global economic time, the Tourism Alliance – comprising 50 Tourism Industry Organisations that together represent some 200,000 businesses of all sizes throughout the UK – highlighted the fact that the UK will be faced with two crucial issues: ‘maintaining employment and generating sustainable economic growth’. This proclamation comes at the same time as the Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) published its higher education blueprint document – Higher Ambitions.
As is well known, most European countries are passing through difficult economic times with unemployment rate soaring and this framework for universities acknowledges that higher education has been a success story and sets out the important role universities must play in securing the country’s economic recovery and long-term prosperity.
For instance, total spending by international students on all types of course in the UK – from English language to doctoral degrees – was estimated to be a whopping £14 billion with the potential to grow to £21 billion by 2020. The industry is seen as one of the keys for rebuilding the UK economy and for generating employment, especially where it is most needed such as in rural communities or among young school-leavers.
In 2011, inbound tourism revenue grew at over five times the rate of the economy as a whole while domestic tourism revenue ended the year 14 per cent higher than 2010. In total, this is additional expenditure in the sector of £3.8billion – enough to generate 76,000 new jobs in 2011 alone! Did you get that? We were instrumental in creating jobs for British citizens while we have millions roaming our streets in search of elusive jobs.
The British are a very smart people; they know that as the global landscape changes more students would travel and study abroad, boosting their tourist industries. Not only will friends and family come to visit them while studying, but students are likely to spread the news of their positive tourism experience to other travelers and return for future visits. In essence, they become “brand ambassadors” for Britain to the detriment of their home countries.
Is it only Britain that is cashing in on our woes? Certainly not, our neighbours; Ghana, Benin Republic and Togo are also jubilating wildly because of the failure to get our act together.
Don’t get me wrong, studying abroad undoubtedly has its own merits, including opportunity to attend top-class universities in different cultural settings and, of course, brighter international career opportunities, but what about our home front? Unfortunately, much of the resources of the universities, which should have been used to rectify these anomalies end up as recurrent expenditure – payment of salaries and spending on non-capital projects. The precarious situation is ever bogged down by poor funding as well as ill-conceived, inconsistent and outright failure of government policies. What happens after we milk the cow (Nigeria) dry?
