A HISTORICAL ATTEMPT AT THE EXPANSION OF ACCESS THROUGH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN NIGERIA, 1999-2010
Abstract
The Federal government licenced the first three universities in 1999, today the number has increased from 41 to 61. However for the purpose of this work, some of the private universities will be focused on. These universities run undergraduate programmes excluding Pan African University and African University of Science and Technology. It is disheartening to know that 39 private universities can only accommodate 49,884 students or 4.0% of total student enrolment. With this situation, it has become clear that the expansion policy in Nigeria university system has failed. It is a myriad for many candidates who want to enter university outside public universities, and could not be addressed adequately even with the private universities already in existence. This is a total failure of public policy. It then means that something is fundamentally wrong with the private universities in Nigeria. Based on this findings, few suggestions are made that private universities should aggressively embark on expansion of infrastructural facilities, more academic programmes and national university commission should ensure that old private universities that have existed since 2005 should accommodate minimum students of at least 10,000 – 15,000 or be closed.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v0i0.2501
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