Skip to main content

Learning Alot of Nothing: The Reality of Nigeria's education

Hello everyone, it's been a while. I have been out of town and very busy trying to get some things going. The reality of our hustle. Hope you are all doing good and enjoyed the 
holiday.

So over the weekend I was reading a couple of things about the Nigerian education sector and since schools  just closed I had the opportunity to talk to some of my young friends, nieces and nephews who are still in school.
How many of us thought when we were young and back in school, how important what we were doing was. I love education, I love a chance to learn new things and I have the kind of mind that hardly ever forgets. Not that I was always first in my class or something but I was a good student, and I thought what I was learning will change the world.  Matter of fact is that it didn't. most of the things that I actually use in my life now are things I learned outside the strictures of the formal education system.

How is it that Nigerian  graduates amount to about 1.8 million people a year and you still hear Nigerian employers talking about Nigerian graduates being unemployable. I was with a couple of friends in Lagos who have their own businesses and one of them was ranting about how he interviewed 7 new graduates for some entry level jobs in his firm and none of them could even pass muster. To tell the truth I was a bit annoyed, I was in the Nigerian unemployment market for a while and it's not that I wasn't  good enough it's just the reality of that circumstance and it offends me when I hear potential employers say stuff like this. He then went on to say how he will only employ Nigerians who have had an education outside Nigeria. It is true that some graduates are a very big disappointment and you don't even want to hear what they have to offer ( working in HR I know this first hand) but we have very wonderful Nigerian trained and ready to learn  graduates too, and is Nigeria the only country where being educated outside our shores is an added advantage? to be honest how many Nigerians can afford this luxury?
 

In school you are taught a lot of subjects that are so removed from reality it makes it difficult sometimes to find real life application. In university I was an economics undergrad and most of the theories are based on the assumption of  "all things being equal". In real life outside of the utopia of education, all things are not equal. when the government increases spending does it necessarily mean that the money will get into the hand of every hardworking Nigerian out there? it doesn't, neither does it  mean that the qualified graduates will be employed.
What is going to be done in our education system so that Nigerian students don't leave school without real world skills.

There is nothing more annoying than working extra hard for four years of your life and an employer who is employing for graduate positions for basically crappy pay tells you that it will be better if you had a masters degree from a school abroad, whether there is globalisation or not, not all knowledge from outside the economy is applicable within the economy, that is why other countries prefer students who have schooled in their country.
On another hand I can understand where the employers are coming from. Who wants to use all their money and time in training someone in skills they should already have? You see some graduates come in to an interview with no skills and ask for start up pay that is probably equivalent to the amount the company is making as profit. You also see that they are un-teachable and even unwilling to learn after being stuck in a system where no one rewards hard work and diligence.

So while the government is busy spending money on only God knows what, they should consider investing in  building a knowledge based economy. A country filled with educated illiterates is useless and will continue to exist in a cycle of bad to worse until employers are happy to pick their human capital from within the economy and train them to be what they hope for.

Nigerian Institutions should also look into building a more rounded graduate in skills, in athletics and in as many fields as possible for a more hands-on kind of education, So that our graduates can at least compete on a global level with students from universities outside out shores.

xoxo. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1000 QUESTIONS

Welcome to 2017 (as if I am the gate keeper to the year. lol) in the spirit of new things, I have some questions that have been on my mind and I will love to share with you.  I wrote this post late last year, but i figured the best way to start a new page is to ask questions then spend the whole time finding answers.  I read somewhere that the questions we ask ourselves improve our experience of any given situation. If you don't fully understand something you cannot fully expose yourself to something you don't understand. So based on my quest to fully understand life I  have a few questions to ask and though  they are not ground breaking, they are questions I have and will like to know your answers to. Caution you will find no answers here...👀👀 What is shame and why do we have it? is it a reflex of our minds to help us not do the stuff we have imposed on ourselves as wrong? Why is it that people who work hard do not get any returns but...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Not So Imaginary Friend

I want to tackle an important issue here. I am not a scientist so if you expect empirical evidence then you have come to the wrong place. I am a well educated person, I read a whole lot but I still believe in the existence of God. Yes that's what this post is about. Whether or not God is real is an existential question for most people, where did we come from and all that, most people strongly refuse to believe because they think that if there is a God then all this science we see will not be, but I believe that science can only exist because there is a higher power that sets the stage, that allows for all to happen. I was reading this passage from the book of Romans chapter one verse 20. I am  not here to preach so don't hang me just yet; but of course if I am going to talk about God I am going to talk about the bible so bear with me. This verse talks about how the evidence of Gods existence being around from the beginning of time and available for all to see, so t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Soft and Pink.

I know a girl, she knows how to stop a crowd, though she is not the most beautiful, there is something about her that catches the eye. She holds her head high, laughs from her heart and wears a smile like gold. I know a girl with a heart so true a love so pure and a mind so strong. She wears her love like a dress and her thoughts she's not afraid to share. That's the girl I want to be, Soft and strong and pink. -YD                                                Soft and Pink is an expression I stole from Wendy Williams. I love it, because it refers to some things a woman sometimes is. I have been wanting to write on this and what it means to me for quite some time and my thoughts have been all over the place. So soft and pink, if your mind is not in the gutter when you hear these words, you  think of fluffy a...
1 comment
Read more