Quote
Choicevine Obochi has a gaping wound in his heart after his ambition of studying abroad was woefully aborted. Although he now works as the Manager of Life Apostolate Publishing Ltd, Enugu, the pain of an unfulfilled ambition has continued to torment his young heart.
Head of International Recruitment and Retension, Birkbeck University of London, Mark Wilson attending to a student
Obochi, as a young man, was offered admission in 2002 to study Business Communication and Public Relations at the International Management Institute, Brussels, with a tailor-made arrangement that would suit his academic needs. He slept and woke up everyday desiring to win academic laurels in a foreign land. But it later dawned on him that he was chasing the wind when his father, a primary school teacher could not raise the 800BEF required for the study.
Obochi’s case is one among thousands of young Nigerians that lost study opportunities abroad. Reports indicate that only five per cent of the population of students in the country seeking admission to foreign universities meet up with the financial requirements. Some lucky ones depend on scholarship offered by different philanthropists, governments and institutions. These scholarships are often too few to go round and accessing study grants in some foreign universities are fraught with some difficulties.
During the 2010 Education UK Exhibition organized by the British Council in Lagos and Abuja, over 50 higher institutions in the United Kingdom were in attendance. The event which was held at the EKO Hotels, Victoria Island, Lagos brought admission to the doorstep of Nigerian students. Other UK universities have also intensified their capacity building efforts aimed at wooing more Nigerian students for their programmes. Aside the opportunity of meeting the representatives of these institutions one-on-one to discuss basic entry requirements, participants were privileged to get first hand information on what it takes to study in the UK.
Some of the students who attended these events were alarmed at the high cost of tuition fees. For instance, in the 2009/2010 academic year, about £9,200 was charged as tuition fees for most full time or sandwich programmes for students who are not resident in the UK or European Union. Some of the courses in this category include: Arts, Business, Law Social Sciences, Mathematics and Foundation programmes.
For courses like Sciences, Engineering, Psychology, Communication and Media Studies, Health, Social Care, about £14,000 to £26,000 is charged per annum for international students.This covers tuition, registration, examination and membership of the student’s union.
In addition to this fee, international students need to pass the UK Border Agency’s Maintenance Test to prove they can support themselves during the study. A budget of £7,200 for a nine months course and £9,600 for 12 months is usually recommended. Students must also budget for living expenses such as accommodation, feeding, clothing, books, local travels and entertainment.
The fees announced by some of the selected UK universities showed that they are far more expensive than the highly rated expensive private universities in the country.
In 2009/2010 session, full -time M.Sc in Bioinformatics with Systems Biology programme for international students at the Birkbeck University of London students cost £15,534 for the one year programme. For full time MA in Philosophy, about £12,336 is required.
Even in the University of Leeds, ranked as the most cost effective institution in the UK in 2007 by the Royal Bank of Scotland Students Living Study, the tuition fees for Science and Engineering undergraduate programmes for international students range from £10,500 to £20,000 per annum. Students of Clinical Medicine/Dentistry pay between £14,000 to £26,000 while science and Engineering cost £14,000 to £15,500. Undeterred by the cost of the academic programmes, this university has over 30,000 students from 130 different countries.
Fees at Brunel University, West London, range from £9,750 to £11,765 for undergraduate programmes. Post-graduate programmes cost between £10,070 to £13,500. The university has over 2,500 international students from over 110 different countries.
At Queen Mary, University of London, the situation is not different either. In the current session, undergraduate programmes in Arts cost £9,500 while Laboratory based courses go for £11,500. Also, students of Medicine pay £15,350 while Dentistry is fixed at £13,350.
The university recently organized an interactive session with proprietors and heads of some schools in Lagos State at the Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja. In an interview with Daily Sun shortly after the event, the Director, International Science and Engineering Foundation Programme of the University, Dr. Priscilla Cunnan, said Nigerian students need the sum of N4m (£7,200 as directed by the High Commission) to enroll for the foundation programme.
Dr. Cunnan said the foundation programme is necessary for Nigerian students because they have no prior knowledge about the UK system of education and the requisite skills demanded for the study.
On the high cost of the programme, Cunnan said: “I think there have always been some things that some people cannot afford. It got to be a training that sets the person that comes to the UK apart from the others. UK education is academic but it is also social. The student is exposed to a wider variety of issues, different cultures and sytems. When that person comes back from the UK, he is coming in with more skills than just academics.”
Responding to the call for the university to be established in Nigeria to reduce the cost for students, Dr. Cunnan declined the option, as such would not achieve the study purpose.
“Rather than have our course taught in Nigeria, that will not achieve our purpose. It is a wholistic education of the individual and our objective can only be achieved if the students come to the UK. The foundation course can be done in Nigeria but at some point, the students are going to be exposed to London”, she explained.
Aside the tuition fees, students also have to grapple with the cost of accommodation in the UK. For instance, at Westfield Student Village, Mile End Campus, rents range from £100.52 to £115.64 per week. Self-catering accommodation ranges from £85.40 to £91.84 per week while vacant flats of houses where group of students live together range from £90 to £110 a week per person, plus energy bills.
The fees of these UK universities cannot be compared with some private universities in the country. For instance, at Babcock University, considered as one of the best private universities in the country, fees for 2010/2011 session range from N563,300 to N727,100 depending thecourse of study. The fees also cover tuition, accommodation and regular meals.
The cost of Medical Laboratory is about N727,100 while Nursing Science goes for N708,800. Also Law programme and Accounting cost N678,300 while Mass Communication programme is pegged at N569,400.
In Achiever’s University, Owo, the schedule of fees for 2009/2010 for fresh students is N250,000 for tuition, acceptance, registration and accommodation, a far cry when compared to the exorbitant fees charged by foreign universities.
In public universities, the case is quite different. On Wednesday last week, students in Ekiti State protested the hike in tuition fees in the state owned tertiary institutions. The students condemned the over N200,000 fee charged fresh students in the College of Medicine of the University of Ado-Ekiti and N90,000 for students in the Faculty of Arts.
A student of the University of Abuja, Adamu Bello, who spoke with Daily Sun, admitted that studying abroad is an exclusive right of those born in rich families. He argued that most parents, who are middle class workers, find it difficult to pay N20,000 to N30,000 fees charged in public universities, let alone doling out millions for studies abroad.
A teacher in Topgrade Secondary School, Surulere, Jane Okeke noted that in spite of the high cost of studying abroad, many Nigerians students are still moving out in droves.
“Every individual desires value for his money. Foreign universities, though expensive, give out the value. Season of strikes has become part of our university system. Lecturers are not committed to duty and the public universities are inadequately funded. Moreover, the attraction is that a graduate of any foreign university is a hot cake in the over-crowded labour market”, she said.
A senior lecturer in one of the federal universities who pleaded not be named faulted the mass migration of students to foreign universities and called on the government to invest in education.
“We have the resources to develop first-class universities here in the country. But the leaders chose to pay lip service to education. Parents are ready to pay through their nose in these universities because it is obvious that the education system at home is sick. This is a country with over 100 state, federal and private universities but none of these institutions is on the list of the best 100 universities in the world. Even in Africa, our universities take a backstage in ranking”, he lamented.
Head of International Recruitment and Retension, Birkbeck University of London, Mark Wilson attending to a student
Obochi, as a young man, was offered admission in 2002 to study Business Communication and Public Relations at the International Management Institute, Brussels, with a tailor-made arrangement that would suit his academic needs. He slept and woke up everyday desiring to win academic laurels in a foreign land. But it later dawned on him that he was chasing the wind when his father, a primary school teacher could not raise the 800BEF required for the study.
Obochi’s case is one among thousands of young Nigerians that lost study opportunities abroad. Reports indicate that only five per cent of the population of students in the country seeking admission to foreign universities meet up with the financial requirements. Some lucky ones depend on scholarship offered by different philanthropists, governments and institutions. These scholarships are often too few to go round and accessing study grants in some foreign universities are fraught with some difficulties.
During the 2010 Education UK Exhibition organized by the British Council in Lagos and Abuja, over 50 higher institutions in the United Kingdom were in attendance. The event which was held at the EKO Hotels, Victoria Island, Lagos brought admission to the doorstep of Nigerian students. Other UK universities have also intensified their capacity building efforts aimed at wooing more Nigerian students for their programmes. Aside the opportunity of meeting the representatives of these institutions one-on-one to discuss basic entry requirements, participants were privileged to get first hand information on what it takes to study in the UK.
Some of the students who attended these events were alarmed at the high cost of tuition fees. For instance, in the 2009/2010 academic year, about £9,200 was charged as tuition fees for most full time or sandwich programmes for students who are not resident in the UK or European Union. Some of the courses in this category include: Arts, Business, Law Social Sciences, Mathematics and Foundation programmes.
For courses like Sciences, Engineering, Psychology, Communication and Media Studies, Health, Social Care, about £14,000 to £26,000 is charged per annum for international students.This covers tuition, registration, examination and membership of the student’s union.
In addition to this fee, international students need to pass the UK Border Agency’s Maintenance Test to prove they can support themselves during the study. A budget of £7,200 for a nine months course and £9,600 for 12 months is usually recommended. Students must also budget for living expenses such as accommodation, feeding, clothing, books, local travels and entertainment.
The fees announced by some of the selected UK universities showed that they are far more expensive than the highly rated expensive private universities in the country.
In 2009/2010 session, full -time M.Sc in Bioinformatics with Systems Biology programme for international students at the Birkbeck University of London students cost £15,534 for the one year programme. For full time MA in Philosophy, about £12,336 is required.
Even in the University of Leeds, ranked as the most cost effective institution in the UK in 2007 by the Royal Bank of Scotland Students Living Study, the tuition fees for Science and Engineering undergraduate programmes for international students range from £10,500 to £20,000 per annum. Students of Clinical Medicine/Dentistry pay between £14,000 to £26,000 while science and Engineering cost £14,000 to £15,500. Undeterred by the cost of the academic programmes, this university has over 30,000 students from 130 different countries.
Fees at Brunel University, West London, range from £9,750 to £11,765 for undergraduate programmes. Post-graduate programmes cost between £10,070 to £13,500. The university has over 2,500 international students from over 110 different countries.
At Queen Mary, University of London, the situation is not different either. In the current session, undergraduate programmes in Arts cost £9,500 while Laboratory based courses go for £11,500. Also, students of Medicine pay £15,350 while Dentistry is fixed at £13,350.
The university recently organized an interactive session with proprietors and heads of some schools in Lagos State at the Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja. In an interview with Daily Sun shortly after the event, the Director, International Science and Engineering Foundation Programme of the University, Dr. Priscilla Cunnan, said Nigerian students need the sum of N4m (£7,200 as directed by the High Commission) to enroll for the foundation programme.
Dr. Cunnan said the foundation programme is necessary for Nigerian students because they have no prior knowledge about the UK system of education and the requisite skills demanded for the study.
On the high cost of the programme, Cunnan said: “I think there have always been some things that some people cannot afford. It got to be a training that sets the person that comes to the UK apart from the others. UK education is academic but it is also social. The student is exposed to a wider variety of issues, different cultures and sytems. When that person comes back from the UK, he is coming in with more skills than just academics.”
Responding to the call for the university to be established in Nigeria to reduce the cost for students, Dr. Cunnan declined the option, as such would not achieve the study purpose.
“Rather than have our course taught in Nigeria, that will not achieve our purpose. It is a wholistic education of the individual and our objective can only be achieved if the students come to the UK. The foundation course can be done in Nigeria but at some point, the students are going to be exposed to London”, she explained.
Aside the tuition fees, students also have to grapple with the cost of accommodation in the UK. For instance, at Westfield Student Village, Mile End Campus, rents range from £100.52 to £115.64 per week. Self-catering accommodation ranges from £85.40 to £91.84 per week while vacant flats of houses where group of students live together range from £90 to £110 a week per person, plus energy bills.
The fees of these UK universities cannot be compared with some private universities in the country. For instance, at Babcock University, considered as one of the best private universities in the country, fees for 2010/2011 session range from N563,300 to N727,100 depending thecourse of study. The fees also cover tuition, accommodation and regular meals.
The cost of Medical Laboratory is about N727,100 while Nursing Science goes for N708,800. Also Law programme and Accounting cost N678,300 while Mass Communication programme is pegged at N569,400.
In Achiever’s University, Owo, the schedule of fees for 2009/2010 for fresh students is N250,000 for tuition, acceptance, registration and accommodation, a far cry when compared to the exorbitant fees charged by foreign universities.
In public universities, the case is quite different. On Wednesday last week, students in Ekiti State protested the hike in tuition fees in the state owned tertiary institutions. The students condemned the over N200,000 fee charged fresh students in the College of Medicine of the University of Ado-Ekiti and N90,000 for students in the Faculty of Arts.
A student of the University of Abuja, Adamu Bello, who spoke with Daily Sun, admitted that studying abroad is an exclusive right of those born in rich families. He argued that most parents, who are middle class workers, find it difficult to pay N20,000 to N30,000 fees charged in public universities, let alone doling out millions for studies abroad.
A teacher in Topgrade Secondary School, Surulere, Jane Okeke noted that in spite of the high cost of studying abroad, many Nigerians students are still moving out in droves.
“Every individual desires value for his money. Foreign universities, though expensive, give out the value. Season of strikes has become part of our university system. Lecturers are not committed to duty and the public universities are inadequately funded. Moreover, the attraction is that a graduate of any foreign university is a hot cake in the over-crowded labour market”, she said.
A senior lecturer in one of the federal universities who pleaded not be named faulted the mass migration of students to foreign universities and called on the government to invest in education.
“We have the resources to develop first-class universities here in the country. But the leaders chose to pay lip service to education. Parents are ready to pay through their nose in these universities because it is obvious that the education system at home is sick. This is a country with over 100 state, federal and private universities but none of these institutions is on the list of the best 100 universities in the world. Even in Africa, our universities take a backstage in ranking”, he lamented.
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