Bridging the Gap in Access to Higher Education in Nigeria: A Policy Analysis

Date of Award

5-1-2025

Degree Name

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Department

School of Education and Health Sciences

Advisor/Chair

Thomas Lasley II

Abstract

ABSTRACT To tackle the imbalance in access to higher education in the Federal Republic of Nigeria which had created a gap in higher educational attainment among the federating states, the federal government, having defined some states as educationally advantaged and others as educationally disadvantaged, introduced the Quota system of admission into Nigeria's federal universities in 1981. In doing this, the federal government was signaling a determination to bridge the existing gap. More than four decades later there still existed concerns about unequal access to Western education and gap in access to higher education between the advantaged states and the disadvantaged states in Nigeria. Against this background, the present study undertook a policy analysis of one of the key criteria of the quota system, the ELDS criterion, which reserved 20% of the total admissions into Nigeria's federal universities for those states classified as educationally disadvantaged. The goal was to assess the success of the ELDS quota criterion in bridging the existing gap in access to higher education. Following the qualitative research tradition, specifically, the interpretivist/constructivist method, the researcher orally interviewed a total of twenty-four (24) purposefully selected participants, 16 undergraduate students and 8 admission officers, from two federal universities, one each from the north and the south of Nigeria. The researcher also analyzed students' admission records from the two universities, as well as extant official government documents on the quota system policy to answer two main research questions: 1) What do participants perceive as the social, economic, and political problems that have shaped the implementation of the current educationally disadvantaged states’ quota admission policy in Nigeria? 2) What are stakeholders’ perspectives on the implementation of the educationally disadvantaged states’ quota admission policy in Nigeria? Key findings from this study indicate that the gap in access to higher education between the advantaged and the disadvantaged states may have narrowed. However, this narrowing of the gap was not due to the implementation of ELDS quota. Also, some socio-cultural factors present at the inception of the policy, and which are still present in Nigeria, have worked against the successful implementation of the ELDS quota. Another major finding from this study is that rather than resolve the imbalance in access to higher education, the ELDS quota has yielded negative results including bringing down Western education standards. Finally, this study finds that the ELDS quota, in its present form, may have lost its relevance either because some states have grown out of Western educationally disadvantaged status or because of candidate's disinterest in applying for higher education in institutions far from their geographical location. Consequently, this study reveals a need for the review of the ELDS quota either for reclassification of the states or total abrogation.

Keywords

Higher Education, Higher Education Administration

Rights Statement

Copyright 2025, author.

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