The Nigerian government has opened the doors to closer collaboration with the United Kingdom (UK) on Transnational Higher Education (TNE) to unlock new opportunities for students.
Receiving in audience, the Nigerian-UK Steering Committee on Transnational Higher Education (NIG-UK-HE-TNE), in Abuja on Monday, the Minister of State for Education, Dr. Yusuf Sununu expressed hope that the partnership would help to the address the challenge of access and others.
According to Sununu, “The population of the country is growing and there is need for more universities due to the increasing number of children.”
He therefore said the capacity of Nigerian universities was not enough to address the demand of every citizen.
He explained that the transnational education would be the key to ensure that Nigerians have access to education.
Earlier, the UK Government International Education Champion, Prof. Steve Smith, who led the delegation said the aim of the partnership was to work out modalities on how UK universities could work more cooperatively with Nigeria as partners in the future.
“Transnational education is where someone studies in the country for a high quality UK degree with quality assured by the British quality assurance system.
“It is obviously a lot cheaper to study here than it is to travel to the UK for three or four years and study and yet the quality is the same.
“To do that, though, we have had to have a couple of years negotiations with the NUC on the guidelines for transnational education and the minister.
“We are not coming here and saying, this is what you should do. That would be silly. We’re coming here to listen and to learn.
“In the areas of schools, what we have done with transnational education is to work together to find a common pattern of how we can work for the mutual benefit of both countries,” he said.
