If there is one controversy dogging the establishment of private educational institutions in the country, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, it is the high, if not outrageous fees, they charge their students. It is, perhaps, worse in tertiary educational institutions – private polytechnics, monotechnics and universities. They are so expensive that common citizens cannot afford sending their children and wards to such schools. Most private schools, if not all, are therefore, patronized by the children of the rich.
It was such that about eight years ago, Roy Chikwem, a Project Manager for the British Council, Nigeria, observed that the cheapest private university in the country as at 2008 was the Al-Hikmah University in Kwara State, owned by the joint organization of Raim Oladimeji and World Assembly of Muslim Youth, based in Saudi Arabia. The institution admits both Christians and Muslims, and students have the right to their religion. In any case the actual amount charged by the school as tuition viewed as cheap was N250, 000 per session. But a lucky student could secure N100,000 scholarships from the same university and end up paying N150,000 per session, whereas most public schools, especially those owned by the Federal Government do not charge half the amount as tuition per session. Those that increase fees arbitrarily end up roughing it out with students that often rise in protest, as was the case in Lagos State during the tail end of former Mr. Babatunde Fashola administration. Ditto for some other states.
Regrettably, the burgeoning number of private universities, currently put at 150, has failed to make any positive impact on the quality of university education in the land. Like public universities constrained by huge infrastructure and funding deficits, as well as falling standards, no Nigerian private university is yet to be ranked among world’s top universities in terms of standard, quality of products and all; though they produce many first class graduates year-in-year out. No Nigerian university, whether public or private, made the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings’ list of world’s top 700 universities within the 2015/16 QS ranking year, for example. The 18 universities from Africa that made the list comprised nine from South Africa; Egypt, five; and one each from Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Besides, the existence of a large number of private universities has done little to ameliorate the problem of admission space in the nation’s university system. Reports indicate that of the close to two million candidates that file out in search of university admission each year, less than 500,000 are taken. The funding of education in the country measure far less than the 26 percent of annual budgets prescribed by the United Nations. Therefore, the amount of fund made available to public universities is likewise far from being adequate to make the institutions revamp themselves, infrastructure, quality and capacity wise.
But amid these challenges, and notwithstanding the huge fees they charge, some private universities are mounting pressure on the FG to consider their institutions for funding. One of such demands came recently from the founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado- Ekiti, (ABUAD), Chief Afe Babalola, who called for the inclusion of private universities as beneficiaries of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND). Babalola argued that TETFUND represented a levy on industrial establishments owned by private individuals as their contribution to educational advancement in the country; and that the exclusion of private universities from benefitting from the fund was unjust. “TETFUND money should be given to private universities that already show seriousness by being established on their own permanent sites and already have some minimum accreditation for the courses they run”, he said.
Following on Babalola’s footsteps also was the Vice-Chancellor of Bells University of Technology, Ota, Ogun State, Prof. Isaac Adeyemi, who lately implored the FG to provide single digit interest loans to private educational institutions to enable them thrive.
These demands appear curious, but they buttress the tight financial situation private universities might be enmeshed in. Therefore, the FG should look into the demands and weigh the possibility or otherwise of bailing them out. But we recommend that should the FG resolve to grant the requests, it should take pains to harmonise, regulate and monitor the fees charged by private universities to make such institutions accessible to the average Nigerian child. For, it would be unjust, too, for private universities to be supported financially by the government if they are not ready to give back to the society.
