Had last week’s go-back-to-work-or-face-a-sack order handed to the striking university teachers by the federal government not grated sufficient nerves to the point of rage, we should ordinarily be savouring the prospects of an engaging conversation on the future of our ivory towers in the global academe, and the crisis of our education in general. For not only has the latest but most unfortunate tango that has left public universities in utter paralysis for five months running rendered the conversation urgent, it is now such that the nation can only postpone the exercise at its peril.
Now, there are those who believe that our nightmare is about ending – barring of course the threat by the unimaginative federal government to dislodge ‘recalcitrant’ teachers should they fail to report at their duty posts at the expiration of yesterday’s ultimatum. They have a good reason to be: with N200 billion in the kitty and the promise of naira rain totalling N1.2 trillion in the coming years; soon it would be time to savour the peace purchased with tears and a precious blood – that is, assuming that the remaining elements in the 2009 sticky agreement, especially the clause mandating another round of negotiation few months from now in 2014, sails without rancour.
No doubt, the N200 billion intervention fund – slated to be shared among the three score plus four universities – federal and states – may seem a lot of money at this time. More like throwing water to a parched soul, it is a lifeline, sort of. However, the fund, when spread among the 701 projects dotting our universities’ landscapes as identified by the Committee on NEEDS Assessment of Nigerian Public Universities, which found 163 of them abandoned and another 538 on-going, it comes to pretty little – a drop in the ocean of the universities’ needs.
By the way, the universities running costs are an entirely different matter; they are just as inadequate to cope with the demands of modern centres of higher education. It takes only a visit to our supposed citadels of higher education to appreciate the depth of the decay ranging from inadequate classrooms, ill-equipped libraries and laboratories to basic conveniences like lavatories and rest-rooms. The situation, to put it mildly, is unimaginable.
The fundamental question remains – what happens after the N1.2 trillion is fully disbursed? Would that also call for another round of strike to press the same point about revitalising the institutions? And by the way, where is the guarantee that the current truce would last particularly as a lot depends on what happens in the coming months? Moreover, to the extent that the same elements of bad faith – which was not in short supply these past years – would remain a constant factor in the 2014 negotiations and beyond, the road ahead promises to be just as bumpy.
The ultimate challenge, in the situation, is to find a lasting solution to the crisis to avert the fire next time.
To be sure, the crisis of funding in our universities mirrors the larger crisis of our public finance system, the corruption and the rot, not excluding the warped definition of what constitutes national priorities for a nation that aspires to join the league of the top 20 economies in less than seven years from now.
That is why the big question really is what to do – in the environment of competing demands on public funds not just in the context of the abysmal state of infrastructure, but also in the context of the grim reality of declining per capita spend on recipients of tertiary education in the last few years. Put simply: it is how to bridge the observed financing gaps in tertiary education.
Now, if you are, like me, persuaded that the nation does not have an inexhaustible vault from where it could always draw upon, you may also agree that it’s time the beneficiaries are called upon to do their bit for the overall good of the system. Coincidentally, as Professor Niyi Akinnaso would have us know in his column in The Punch last year, Nigeria is not alone in this. Drawing his example from his base in the United States where he teaches, he noted that government appropriations, having dropped from over 50 per cent of university budgets in the 1980s to between 12 and 20 per cent in the 2000s has led to the hiking of tuition fees from some five per cent or less to between 25 and 35 per cent of university operational budgets.
In our environment, such a proposition is certainly not popular to push. The truth however is that the illusion that tertiary education could be had for free can no longer be sustained any more now than the loathing of the idea of pricing that level of education like any other economic good. The challenge, to start with, is how to overcome the confounding reluctance by the universities themselves to determine the per capita cost of academic programmes as a necessary step to addressing the problem of funding in a realistic way.
I had cause to address the issue on this page when the staff and students of Lagos State University took to the barricades shortly after the institution hiked tuition in that institution. Imagine a situation in which it costs N600,000 to produce a well-rounded doctor and the government is only able to put, say N300,000 on the table. Let’s also say, for the purpose of argument, that the student is made to pay additional N100,000 in tuition and associated fees. Of course, even if we take out the factors of corruption and leakages in the system, only in our typically creative imagination can we conceive of a situation in which N400,000 input would deliver the result of N600,000 input! Has anyone considered the output in terms of the cadaver that our medical trainee would never get to ‘see’ outside of the theoretical anatomy class throughout the entire five-year duration of the course?
Here is my simple proposition: let begin with determining the cost of each academic programme. In addition to capital grants, let the government state how much, per capita, it is willing to put in. It is the educated thing to do. That way, everyone knows the gap to be filled. In the long run, the challenge is how to ensure that bright, indigent students are not denied university education.
By the way, I have heard the suggestion about transforming the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETF) into an education bank to avail everyone that desires higher education loans. If you ask me, I would not consider it a bad idea. Why should we baulk at the idea only because the Students Loans Board of old failed? And what is so sacrosanct about the TETF bureaucracy?
