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Impact of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)'s strike on the foreign perception of Nigerian Graduate Students



This is a true story of what happened to one of the Nigerian students I hired as a graduate student in 2019. The outcome was not wholesome for the student, and this was partly because of the perceived low quality of education in Nigerian public universities. When a session is shortened to 5 or 6 months instead of the normal 9 months, there is no way the quality will not be watered down for the majority. Here is the story:

I hired this smart student from one of the leading public universities in Nigeria. He graduated with first-class honors (summa cum laude). He did not disappoint when he joined my group. He worked in a very difficult area of research. He was done with lab work mid-way into his 3rd semester. Since he told me of his interest to proceed to Ph.D. after his master's, I began to pursue opportunity for him to be fast-tracked to Ph.D. at the end of his 2nd semester of M.S. When he put in his application, the DGS of the program told me that there is no way he would support my student's application because his undergraduate education is not at par with his counterpart in the U.S. The student was denied this opportunity. This student completed his M.S. in record time - 3 semesters, which was unusual. M.S. typically is a 4-semester program in the US but because of his brilliance, he did it in a shorter time. When the student presented his exit seminar, one of his committee members said, I quote paraphrasing "even Ph.D. students in my department (Computer Science) cannot present a work with this level of depth." This student today has climbed the ladder quickly in Silicon Valley as a Sr. Software Engineer in the best retailing outlet in the world.

My point is that Nigerians home and abroad bear the consequence of prolonged ASUU strikes. Most Nigerians you find in graduate schools abroad are our best-of-the-best who often perform at a higher level than their peers but are discriminated against because of the poor state of the educational system in Nigeria..... We cannot change this narrative until a lasting solution is found to the problem of poor funding that instigates constant ASUU strikes. I spent 7 years instead of 5 as an undergraduate student in Nigeria. I cannot measure enough the economic loss of this for me and my peers.... It is the same experience for many current students in Nigerian public institutions and we have had successive governments that refused to reason, at best reform the system....

Give Nigerian public universities the autonomy they asked for.... Find a way to stop/prevent incessant ASUU strikes. Salary does not have to be the same across all public institutions. Introduce appropriate tuition, provide substantial scholarships for many on the honor's list, create alternative paths for those who could not afford tuition, provide competitive research grants where lecturers could make extra money through salary savings on funded projects, provide infrastructural support....task private entities to support creative, and innovative works within our institutions - provide tax incentives to encourage private sector investment in higher education in Nigeria. Tax the oil companies who hire our best students trained by these public institutions. These are a few ideas, I am so sure there are more and better ideas from brilliant minds we have within the Nigerian academic institutions..... perhaps some of these solutions have been preferred already but implementation cost is what is discouraging action. If we do not provide education to our wards, we can never develop as a nation. There are less than 2 million university students in Nigeria currently, that is too few for a nation of over 210 million people.....

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