Chief of Staff to the President Femi Gbajabiamila said there are no intermediaries in the student loan application system currently being designed.
Gbajabiamila spoke at the 35th Convocation of the Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), titled “Empowering Nigerian Youths in the Present Day Economy,” where he discussed how Nigerian students are “educating He said that efforts are underway to launch the program in January 2024 so that students can access loans “to finance their education.
He said;
“Applicants will apply online, be verified online, and be credited based on verifiable documents and credentials submitted. Access to this loan is purely egalitarian, as no one needs to know anyone to qualify for this loan. The student loan program answers part of the question of how to fund quality public higher education, but not all of it.
A serious discussion about the future of higher education in Nigeria requires a thorough examination of ways and means to address the funding needs of public institutions of higher education outside of government subsidies.
In this regard, we cannot long escape the simple truth that higher education costs money.”
The simple truth is that for our institutions to compete favorably, we need more resources than are currently available to address the dangerous decline in scholarship, academic achievement, and quality of graduates produced by many institutions.”
Gbajabiamila also stated that a review of curriculum and teaching methods is needed to achieve the goals of disruption and reinvention.
He added that;
We need an aggressive and sustained program of investment in education. Not only physical infrastructure such as classrooms and lecture halls, but also investments in technology hardware and software to facilitate information exchange and innovation
In this new world, nothing has changed more dramatically than the nature of work and how productivity is measured. Today, many skills that guaranteed employment and a healthy income for previous generations have been rendered redundant by technological advances.
This generation will not only compete with each other for opportunities, but will also compete in a global marketplace, with students from around the world, and with technologies that are increasingly replacing human functions in the workplace, such as artificial intelligence (AI) tools, blockchain, and financial technology tools. We must prepare them with these realities in mind.
To do this effectively, we must develop a new understanding of the changing nature of work and the future of employment.” The limitations of our knowledge prevent us from effectively addressing the challenges of this new era and adapting to the changing realities from which we cannot escape. Cooperation between institutions of higher education and the organized private sector is essential to carry out the essential work of engagement, research, and examination needed to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
We need to do this as a necessary preliminary step to focus public attention on this issue.” This is a goal that cannot be left to the government alone, for the sake of our future.”