Don Blames Varsity Students' Agitation On Poor Funding

By NAN 

Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie, former President, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has blamed the current protests by students in universities across the country on inadequate funding.

Awuzie, in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday, said that the issue of inadequate funding of universities by proprietors would continue to generate instability if not tackled.

He said it was worrisome that funds allocated to federal and state universities in recent times had continued to slide, rather than improve.

“I want to assure you that the change we all are expecting currently can speedily be achieved through massive funding of education, especially at the basic and the tertiary levels.

“Here, we are building more universities when the existing ones are barely struggling to survive.

“Money spent in building these new ones could have been invested into the existing ones to get them well equipped with world class technology for teaching, learning and research.

“Today, students are agitating over one basic amenity or the other and the universities are being shut down in order to avoid incurring losses, which does not tell well about our system,’’ he said.

Awuzie, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor, Imo State University, said that whenever ASUU called for increased funds for universities and other tertiary institutions, it was doing so out of patriotism.

According to him, these tertiary institutions, which are saddled with the mandate of teaching, learning and research basically, should be able to proffer solutions to the many societal challenges.

“These universities and tertiary institutions, if well-funded, will generate more money from people in the Diaspora coming into the country to study.

“We would equally be attracting foreign scholars who would equally contribute their wealth of experience, thereby creating a platform for healthy rivalry among their colleagues.

“We appreciate the fact that government is faced with a lot of challenges presently.

“Having said that however, we should also not forget the fact that as we are trying to diversify the economy from oil to other viable sectors, we must not allow our actions to push education further down the line,’’ the don said. (NAN)

ITF Moves To Strengthen Students' Industrial Work Experience

Taiwo Ogunmola Omilani 

The Industrial Training Fund, (ITF) said it has commenced moves to strengthen the Students Industrial Work Experience, (SIWES) in order to stimulate and sustain industrial development, grow the economy and create jobs in line with the vision of the federal government.

Speaking during a stakeholders summit organised by the agency, the acting director general of the Fund, Mr. Dickson Onuoha, said the agency would also meet regularly with both regulators and other stakeholders to think outside the box so as to improve the standard of the SIWES scheme.

He explained that the SIWES scheme was established by the federal government to solve the problem of lack of adequate skills preparatory for employment in the industrial sector by Nigerian graduates of tertiary institutions.

Noting however that the scheme which exposes and transit students from classrooms to the practical world has been grappling with the challenges of inadequate funding due to increasing demands on governments revenue and the increase in the number of students graduating from the nation’s tertiary institutions, Onuoha said called for a reduction in the number of programme has become necessary in order to make SIWES more effective.

He described the SIWES as capable of bridging the gap between theory and practical realities in the nation’s industrial sector, pointing out that ITF will continue to evolve innovative methods, considering that the scheme has continued to prepare students for the world of work.

Source:

http://leadership.ng/news/522318/job-creation-itf-moves-strengthen-students-industrial-work-experience

UNESCO Report - Global Aid Support To Education Falls Again

Ruth Tene Natsa 

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, has revealed that latest aid figures to education went down by almost US$600 million, or per cent between 2013 and 2014.

The report also showed that the share of total aid being allocated to education also fell from 9.5 per cent to 8.2 per cent, indicating that the sector is falling further down the list of priorities.

It further showed that aid to basic education, providing for pre-primary and primary education as well as basic life skills, has decreased by per cent since 2013, an even greater fall than for education as a whole.

Meanwhile, out- of- school numbers for primary education are on the rise, totaling 59 million by latest counts, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

The GEM Report has previously calculated that aid to education needs would increase by, at least, six times to fill the annual finance gap of $39 billion in order to provide the global target of 12 years of quality education for all by 2030.

Yet the latest analysis shows that, rather than rising, levels of aid to the sector are 8 per cent lower than they were in 2010. To fill the remaining gap and reach the target, these aid levels now need to increase seven-fold.

Director of the GEM Report, UNESCO, Aaron Benavot said “It is disheartening to see that international aid to education is going in totally the wrong direction. This will make education progress extremely difficult, if not impossible, for many countries still reliant on financial support from donors. And early indications of aid flows for 2015 do not leave much room for optimism.” 

Source: http://leadership.ng/news/522309/global-aid-support-education-falls-report