Abstract
In spite of the pivotal role of education to the advancement of mankind, the opportunities for enrolment in tertiary education in Nigeria were grossly inadequate for the needs of the country. Access to higher education, gender parity and the lack of capacity of the system to absorb the numbers of candidates seeking admission to higher educational institutions among others, continue to pose serious problems to the attainments of education sector goals in the country. This paper is aimed at evaluating the 2009 educational reforms benchmarks towards the development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The paper relied on secondary source of data. Official publication of Federal Ministry of Education, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) country reports, Roadmap for Education (2009) and JAMB Annual Reports/publications were used for descriptive and analytical purposes. The paper established that for the period under review 2011-2016, the 20% annual increase in admission benchmark though reasonably achieved with 62% positive variance, the gap between those admitted and candidates left out continue to grow, thus out of the 7.5 million candidates that applied for placements into Nigerian tertiary institutions, only about 1.7 million candidates were admitted (21.9%) leaving out 78% or 5.9 million from opportunities for tertiary education and the reform benchmark on gender equity (55%/45% male-female) was yet to be achieved. The paper recommends for the expansion of the activities of National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) with improved facilities, advancement of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) programmes, and increase of carrying capacity of tertiary institutions without compromising standards. Also that female admission ratio into tertiary institutions should be improved with continuous gender focused education programmes. Keywords: Education, Access to education, Gender parity, Quality education DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/10-11-02 Publication date: November 30 th 2020
Highlights
Throughout the world, education has been valued as a means of addressing socio-economic inequalities where they exist and for transforming societies and cultures
In spite of the pivotal role of education to the advancement of mankind, the opportunities for enrollment in tertiary education in Nigeria were grossly inadequate for the needs of the country
Access to higher education and the lack of capacity of the system to absorb the numbers of candidates seeking admission to higher educational institutions continue to pose serious problems
Summary
Throughout the world, education has been valued as a means of addressing socio-economic inequalities where they exist and for transforming societies and cultures. The general acceptability of education as the most desired instrument for political, economic, social and technological development and advancement globally is not debatable. In spite of the pivotal role of education to the advancement of mankind, the opportunities for enrollment in tertiary education in Nigeria were grossly inadequate for the needs of the country. It was estimated that as at 2009 out of 400,000 JAMB candidates seeking admission to university education, more than 320,000, which is about 80% were not able to gain admission to any of the 37 Nigerian Universities. In 2013, 1.7million candidates registered for Nigeria’s centralized tertiary admission examinations conducted by Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), all competing for the half million places available, potentially leaving over a million qualified college age Nigerians without a post-secondary place(FME Report, 2009)
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