{"id":132952,"date":"2019-03-11T18:47:39","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T16:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/nigerias-universities-are-performing-poorly-what-can-be-done-about-it-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2019-03-11T18:47:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T16:47:39","slug":"nigerias-universities-are-performing-poorly-what-can-be-done-about-it-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/nigerias-universities-are-performing-poorly-what-can-be-done-about-it-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria\u2019s universities are performing poorly. What can be done about it | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigeria\u2019s universities are performing poorly. What can be done about it<\/a>: <\/p>\n

In one year alone 380,000 domestic applicants didn't get a university place in Nigeria.<\/span> Shutterstock<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why are Nigeria\u2019s universities in such a sorry state? Some would say it had to do with just one word: money. Sadly this is part of the reason. But not entirely. <\/p>\n

Nigeria\u2019s universities have been under-funded for decades. Like a talented but under-achieving football team, fail to achieve goals because the country hasn\u2019t invested enough in their structure, their facilities and their people.<\/p>\n

Higher education in Nigeria includes universities (federal, state and private) as well as polytechnics (skills-intensive and experiential learning programmes) and colleges of education. With over 160 universities, 128 polytechnics and 177 colleges of education, it constitutes the largest higher education system in Africa. <\/p>\n

My colleague Professor Val Ekechukwu, the Dean of Engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and I did a review of Nigeria\u2019s top 12 universities to assess their academic output. This review was undertaken as part of a comparative assessment of Nigerian universities to other emerging global economies (Brazil, Turkey and Thailand). The review hasn\u2019t been published in an academic journal but its contents have been made available to readers interested in the development of tertiary education in Nigeria via news outlets.<\/p>\n

We found that the country\u2019s universities lag well behind equivalent emerging global economies like South Africa, Egypt, Thailand, Turkey and Brazil. They also lag behind traditional world leaders. <\/p>\n

We sourced the data for our paper from SciVal. This tracks the research performance of over 10,400 research institutions from 230 countries. <\/p>\n

The problems<\/h2>\n

Decades of under-funding in universities has had dramatic consequences. These include:<\/p>\n