The constant disruption in the academic calendar of Nigeria’s tertiary education system is costing the nation an estimated N30 billion annually by way of foreign exchange paid by parents for their wards to school abroad, BusinessDay investigations reveal.

Findings from Canadian and British universities alone indicate that on the average 15,000 Nigerians get admitted to study in the two countries annually, with an average tuition and living cost of $19,000 per student.

This scenario alone means that Nigerians pay over N4.5 billion for their children and wards in the UK and Canada per annum. Those aspiring to the United States spend about N2 billion with about 7,000 students in American universities.

Though exact figures for other European countries, South Africa, Ghana, Malaysia and Asian countries could not be got, it is estimated that total foreign spending on education on a yearly basis could be in the region of N30 billion, which is 95 percent private sector financed.

The implication of this, according to analysts, portends great drain on the economy. They argue that this money would have been used for investment purposes if our tertiary institutions are well run without loss times.

The boom in foreign education, analysts say, is as a result of government’s poor education sector policy as well as lack of confidence in our local university education, which is bedevilled by constant academic disruption owing to industrial action and agitation by lecturers.

Total expenditure on foreign education currently is more than a quarter of the nation’s entire budget for the education sector in the last couple of years.

While it is no longer news that the industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has crippled the public university system in the country for the over two months, what is however worrying education stakeholders is the academic future of students in the country who are paying for the lost time.

Iain Stewart, a member of the British Parliament, recently revealed that there will be nearly 30,000 Nigerian students in the UK by 2015, and this accounts for 7 percent of the total UK university population, thereby making Nigeria’s student population the third largest from non-European Union countries. The nation trails India that has 39,090 and China 67,325.

According to a recent report by the US Embassy Educational Advising Centre, Nigeria sends more students to the US than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria currently has over 6,500 students studying at over 733 institutions in all 50 states of the US and the District of Columbia.

To Tolu Odugbemi, vice chancellor, Ondo State University of Science and Technology (OSUSTECH), this trend is worrisome and called on government to arrest the situation, if it hopes to produce viable future for the productive youths of the country.

Odugbemi is pained that foreign universities are profiting from Nigeria’s ill-equipped institutions, as Nigerian youths paid whopping sums as tuition to Canadian, British and even neighbouring Ghana universities.

The university don is saddened by the fact that virtually all higher institutions in Nigeria currently depend almost exclusively on government subsidies. A situation that makes them almost totally dependence on the government for funding, this he opined cannot move higher education away from the doldrums it was currently experiencing.

Disruption in academic calendar, lack of infrastructure, incessant strikes by lecturers, and growing appetite for foreign graduates by employers, among other things, according to analysts, are responsible for this drive towards foreign education by Nigerians.

http://businessdayonline.com/2013/09/nigeria-loses-over-n30bn-annually-to-rising-demand-for-foreign-education/

Sending your child to a government university in the Nigeria of TODAY is a crime against humanity. Plan for your kids, make sure Nigerian government universities are excluded from that plan.