TheFirst

Nigerians like to be emotional so they abandon logic. The clear point @AskMichaelTaiwo with his tweet is "the true cost of baseline quality University Education is ₦1M / Student per year". We can argue how it should be paid. Your emotions will not change the fact that Quality Education is expensive and it is not being funded appropriately here. If you do a Venn Diagram of people that are attacking him, they are the same people that believe Jonathan created 8 Universities because he called a converted Duplex a University. And someone that has 10 papers of self referenced work a Prof. The people arguing against the cost of University Education are the same that are happy to pay 3x the price point of same in a "Private University" Should government subsidise quality University Education? 100%. Can a well run Nigeria subsidize quality public education for 50%+ of University age people? 100% But Nigeria is not well run. We have Universities churning out science graduates that have never seen a petri dish not to talk of Microscope. But these people do not care. They want to answer graduate not realizing there is a massive opportunity cost of going to a poorly funded University. The feeding, accommodation, transportation cost alone and is a very poor return for the quality of education in public universities today. After 4 years of paying the ancillary costs to get a non functional Microbiology degree, all but the top 10% need to spend 6 months being trained to be a cashier, or end up selling wig, food or okrika on Instagram. Their peers in other school internationally are manipulating the human genome. (even if at 16 both kids were level academically) I was fortunate to have gone tk a public University but things were not as bad as they were. And public Secondary Education was miles ahead. Of course the population was different. So the idea is how do we recalibrate and get on track! Then there are the personal attracks that MT of all people is pulling a ladder he used to climb. What a joke! No Nigerian individual has helped the poorest Nigerians climb the academic ladder more than MT. (@AskMichaelTaiwo please how much is the in scholarship has MT fellowship been responsible for since inception?) But again this is Twitter and nonsense is allowed. The other day it was @winexviv they attacked for trying to call out the WAEC boss. The problem is still there but the attackers never cared. They only activate their neutrality when it is time to fight those trying tk change the system. Anyway, my very strong opinion remains, government should transition out of running and primarily funding University Education. The focus should be on Primary and Secondary Education then perhaps technical colleges. For those that want to go to University, there should be scholarships for the most brilliant and loans available to bridge the gap for others. People thag can afford it should pay full tuition Government should focus on ensuring the standards are set well and kept. They can give all incentives (land, tax breaks etc) that will reduce the cost of setting up and running Universities. If you wish to disagree, the floor is yours. But for most people who are a product of poorly funded Universities, all they can do is insult and "drag". Anyway, all the best to all involved.