When I was putting the first part of this column to bed last week, the very depressing and heart-rending report, put together by a 10-member Needs Assessment Committee, headed by Prof. Mahmood Yakubu with former Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU), President, Prof Ukachukwu Awuzie as member was released with the revelation that public universities have largely become a mockery of what citadels of research and learning should be; in essence, our tertiary institutions are in a dire strait, far more than we ever imagined. This however, is story for another day, but what I started out writing last week is directly connected with current happenings in the ivory towers.
As the fees being paid by undergraduates kept increasing over the years, it is becoming apparent and glaring that we are gradually imbibing some of the attributes of a full-fledged neo-liberal capitalist system that has profit as the driving force of almost everything. Put simply, we are likely not going back to the days of free or subsidised education because education, like other social services and products, will be commoditised and anyone that needs it will have to pay to access it. But unlike other full-fledged capitalist states that have shock mechanisms to take care of the helpless in society, ours does not. So in the case of the present reality what needs to be done to ensure that a student is not denied access to education because he is from a poor family? Since we borrowed our democracy from the United States of America, I’d like to draw examples from there on how students access loans to complete their education and see if we can borrow a leaf.
In 1965, Senator Claiborne Pell of the US Congress tabled a legislation that later became the Higher Education Act. Originally known as the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, it was later named after him (Federal Pell Grants). The Pell Grant is money the U.S. federal government provides for students who need it to pay for college. Federal Pell Grants are limited to students with financial need, who have not earned their first bachelor’s degree. The Grant program is sponsored by the United States Department of Education which determines the student’s financial need. The U.S Department of Education uses a standard formula to evaluate financial information reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to determine the student’s expected family contribution (EFC).
Funding for colleges and universities is managed partly by the Department of Education directly, called the Federal Direct Student Loan Program (FDSLP). The other half is managed by commercial entities such as banks, credit unions, and financial services firms under the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Some schools accept only FFELP loans; others accept only FDSLP. Still others accept both, and a few schools will not accept either, in which case students must seek out private alternatives for student loans.
The Pell Grant is covered by legislation titled the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), Title IV, Part A, Subpart 1; 20 U.S.C. 1070a. These federal funded grants are not like loans and do not have to be repaid. Students may use their grants at any one of approximately 5,400 participating post-secondary institutions. These federally funded grants help about 5.4 million full-time and part-time college and vocational school students nationally. For the 2010–2011 school year, 7 of the top 10 colleges by total Pell Grant money awarded were for-profit institutions with one institution; University of Phoenix, Arizona having an enrollment of 380,000 students.
Before the Pell Grant became what it is today it went through numerous changes between 1972 and 2011. In that year, the maximum award amount per student was $5,550 (N847,800). The program was funded at an amount of $17,114,000,000 from 2008–2010 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The application process requires the student and the student’s family to complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. The applicant completes the FAFSA form for the first time prior to starting the freshman undergraduate year, and then updates the form each year as he/she progresses through the college undergraduate term.
In Nigeria, we do not have anything close to the Pell Grant, though we have instances where some state governments give scholarships to their citizens, but this often fall short of meeting students’ needs. What we do have is the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) which was established as an intervention agency under the Education Tax Act No. 7 of 1993 and amended by Education Tax (Amendment) Act No. 40 of 1998; with project management to improve the quality of Education in Nigeria. To enable the TETFund achieve its objectives, Act No. 7 of 1993 as amended imposes a 2 percent (2%) Education Tax on the assessable profit of all registered companies in Nigeria.
There is no doubt that university education has undergone tremendous expansion in recent times due to rapid increase in the demand for and enrolment in university education perceived as crucial in sustaining individual growth and relevant to the development of high level manpower in relevant fields for socio-economic, scientific and technological development. For instance, the university enrolment figures of 1,096,312 for both the degree and non-degree programmes in 2010, for instance, exceeded the carrying capacity of 715,000 by an over enrolment of 381,312 students. Government objective is to provide adequate access to university education to whoever desires, however government resources have not been sufficient to meet the massive expansion needs. Therefore the need arises for cost-sharing arrangements.
A recent study conducted on the socio-economic background of households in Nigeria revealed that over 70% are poor and only about 29% of families can live on one dollar (N157.00) or above a day, which implies that the socio-economic hardship experienced by the parents deprives many of access to university education as many cannot afford to pay their children’s school fees thereby not addressing the issue of access and equity
Juxtaposed with the average fees charged by Nigerian universities which stands at not less than N100,000 and in excess of N1 million in case of some private universities, it means that over 70% of some households may not be able to send their children to the university. Since some companies are already committing 2% of their assessable profit to the TETfund would they be willing to do more to support tertiary education?
They should considering the fact that products of such universities are the manpower they need; companies should see this as an investment for the future. There is nothing wrong for a company to have a long term plan for a specific cadre of students that it may need for its line of business. It can set up a loan scheme with some universities where they can go into an undertaking with students who would be compelled to work for certain period to offset their loan arrangements. This, I believe, will go a long way in stemming the tide of “educated illiterates” that some of our universities churn out every year. The money wasted in retraining these graduates can be put into more productive uses.
However, I have my reservation because the present neo-liberal ideology teaches Nigerian leaders to subject provision of social service such as functional education, affordable healthcare, massive transportation development (road, rail, water), job creation, food and energy supply, etc to market forces. With these policies, it is the rich that will be buying up the country’s resources at a token- with state resources anyway- while majority will not be able to afford the huge cost needed to access social service. Is this the way to go? China and other Asian countries should point us toward other route.
