These days I hear people say things like:
”Education is no longer the key to success, we need another key"
I feel that for such sentiment to be shared by a large number of young people, students included, it means that the educational system has failed terribly. It has failed to the extent that people no longer believe in the power of education anymore, they just see it as the next ordinary thing.
When I was in Primary school, I had the time of my life. This was because at that time, the government was actually invested in the educational system and efforts were made to ensure the smooth running of the educational sector for all the class levels.
Back then, there were lots of fun and diverse extracurricular activities that helped to engage students.
There were activities like inter state debates, inter house sports, cooking competitions between different schools from different local governments in the state, etc.
I always enjoyed attending such events as I participated in some of them myself which helped me to learn some skills along the way and also provide an avenue for me to enjoy the learning process.
There were enough qualified teachers for the job which ensured that students were taught well.
Tertiary institutions were not left out when it came to the government actually having interest in educating the younger generation. It was easy to get an offer of admission into the university before ethnic politics got dragged into the educational sector. It was also a simple thing to go study in a different state far away from one's geo-political zone without fear of any threat to one's life and education.
School fees was really affordable in public universities which usually made them the universities of first choice and as such, a lot of students would prefer to go to these public universities because of the affordability of the school fees. And it was only those that preferred to learn in a more calm environment that could afford private universities.
Unfortunately, in recent times it's not the case anymore.
Starting with the high cost of school fees, it came as a shock to every student in public universities when all the universities suddenly increased their school fees to a very high amount without a moment's notice. The reason given to us was that the Federal government has detached itself from the affairs of public universities and so the universities are not getting the funds that should be allocated to them to run their affairs as it should be, instead each university has been left to it's devices.
They didn't just increase the school fees, other fees were brought to us to pay and they were all tagged mandatory.
These days, the university finds new ways to get students to cough out money as if the high school fees is not enough.
As a result, students are beginning to drop out of school because they can't cope with the different payments we have to make as students each semester.
It's really sad.
I would really like for the Federal government to focus more on public universities so that the financial burden on students would be eased. It's getting to a point where students in some schools are revolting to the extent that the school had to be shut down indefinitely because the Vice Chancellor was assaulted by angry students who demanded a reduction in the school fees.
Coupled with the high rate of school fees which is already difficult to pay, the school also gives a deadline which doesn't help students at all. In my school, school fees has to be paid in first semester and there's a deadline for the payment of school fees in order for students to register their courses. It's so unfair and I don't feel that the voices of the students are not even being heard talk less of listened to.
The government is not invested so much in public universities anymore and so students have to suffer for it.
THE PRIVILEGES OF SCHOOLING IN RECENT TIMES
One of the things that students enjoy now that wasn't enjoyed by students back in the day is constant access to the internet.
Lecturers in my school like to talk about how they found it tasking to carry out research for their projects and how long it took them to get the necessary information directly from the field which would have been made easier if the internet was easily accessible back then.
These days, all we students need to even do assignments is just our smartphones and good connection to the internet and we can have all we need on a particular topic or subject.
It has even been made easier with the invention of artificial intelligence like CHAT GPT which a lot of students use these days to do research for their projects without even lifting a finger.
Technology has really helped students in recent times by granting easy access to the internet.
