The Challenges of Being a Student of Any Public Tertiary Institution in Nigeria of Today

Abstract

Tertiary institution serves as an avenue for a child to acquire additional education beyond the primary and secondary education. It can equip a child with additional knowledge, skills, and values, which can enable him/her live comfortably within the society, as well as contribute more to its progress. The desire of many parents is to ensure that their children attend tertiary institution, so as to enjoy the dividends of tertiary education. In this paper, the challenges which the students of public tertiary institutions are facing in Nigeria are examined, such as: inadequate classrooms, ill equipped library and laboratories, incessant closure of institution as a result of students unrest, cultism and strikes, inadequacy and non commitment of some lecturers, just to mention few. Evidences in support of the challenges and their gravities were gathered from literature. To make public tertiary institutions worthwhile for the students and redeem the lost glory of tertiary education in Nigeria, provision of more infrastructural facilities and improvement of the state of those available, monitoring and supervision of the lecturers and enforcement of discipline among erring lecturers, resolving crises in the public tertiary institutions through dialogue, avoiding indiscriminate invitation of law enforcement agents into campuses, avoiding the closure of institutions indefinitely, organising seminars, workshop and conferences for the institutions’ administrators, charging moderate fees, generation of fund internally, moral training of children, as well as the provision of needs of children by parents/guardians, are recommended.