There will be no intermediaries in student loans – Gbajabiamila
The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said there will be no intermediaries in the Student Loan Application system that is currently being designed.
Delivering the lecture titled “Empowering Young Nigerians in Today’s Economy” at the 35th convocation ceremony of the Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), Gbajabiamila said efforts are underway to ensure the take-off of the scheme in January 2024 to ensure that Nigerians students can access the loan “to finance their educational aspirations”.
He said;
“Applicants will apply online, be verified online and credited based on the verifiable documents and credentials they submitted. No one will need to know anyone to qualify for these loans, so that access to this financing is genuinely equitable. The student loan system answers part of the question of how to finance a quality public higher education, but it does not answer the whole question.
“Any serious conversation about the future of higher education in Nigeria must include an in-depth consideration of the ways and means of responding to the financing needs of public higher education institutions, beyond government subsidy.
“In this regard, we cannot avoid for much longer the simple truth that higher education costs money and that the best institutions worldwide are successful, among other things, because they can generate significant sums through tuition fees, investments and other means .
“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 the quality of scholarship and the academic output and graduates we produce in many of our institutions.”
Gbajabiamila further said that to achieve the purpose of disruption and reinvention, there must be a review of curricula and teaching methods “to place our practices in the context of global labor needs”.
He added;
“We demand an aggressive and sustained investment program in education. Not just in the physical infrastructure of classrooms and classrooms, but also in technological hardware and software to facilitate information exchange and innovation.
“In this new world we find ourselves in, nothing has changed as drastically as the nature of work and the way we measure productivity. Today, many skills that guaranteed employment and a healthy income to previous generations have been made redundant by technological advances.
“This generation will not only compete against each other for opportunities, but will also compete in a global marketplace, against students from around the world and against technology, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, blockchain and financial technology tools. which are increasingly replacing the human role in the workplace. We must prepare them with these realities in mind.
“To do this effectively, we need to develop a new understanding of the changing nature of work and the future of employment. The limits of our knowledge prevent us from effectively facing the challenges of this new era and adapting to changing realities from which we cannot escape. Collaboration between our higher institutions and the organized private sector is vital to carry out the essential engagement, research and review work needed to close the gaps in our knowledge.
“We need to do this as a necessary precursor to focusing national attention on these issues so that we can, together, respond to the demands of the moment. This is an objective that we cannot, for the sake of our future, leave to the government alone to pursue.”
Source: www.lindaikejisblog.com