Access to Higher Education in Developing Countries

A common challenge for developing countries or economies is the inadequate access to Higher education needed for human capital development. For instance in Nigeria university sub-sector over 1.1 million candidates with about 75% of them having the minimum academic requirements, sit for the nationally organized Universities Matriculation examination annually, whereas the existing universities in Nigeria can only absorb about 220,000 new entrants. You can imagine the shortfall and the backlog of candidates that will be thrown into the education market without opportunities of furthering their career until the following year.

In fact this education crisis prompted the government to bridge this yawning gap between demand and supply, the Nigerian government has over the years, taken a number of steps, the most significant being between 1999 and 2007. The government, realizing that she could not satisfy the educational requirements of the nation, invited the Private Sector to participate in the provision of university education. Consequently, between 1999 and 2007, thirty-four private universities were licensed by government with 15 of them established in 2005 alone. The number of private universities has increased to 41 in 2009.

With these measures, the disequilibrium between demand and supply in tertiary education persists, as the private universities put together account for just 5 % of total student enrollment in the Nigerian University System with the 27 Federal universities accounting for about 70% of total student enrollment. Concerted efforts has been put together between 2008 till the time of writing this article to engaged cross-border education in collaboration with open and distance learning. The university commission then identified six dual mode universities and on single mode university for this project.

The New Era of Higher Education

Will the beloved "brick and mortar" college campuses completely disappear from the land in this strange new century? Distance learning is changing the face of higher education. Today, more than ever, scholars both young and old are seizing this novel opportunity. Most schools now offer courses taught from a distance. Never before in history has technology allowed such colossal amounts of knowledge to be available at our fingertips. A new era calls for different methods and innovations in learning.

You may ask, "What about the distance education? What's so special about it?" Well, distance learning has been around for a long time, although it has changed much since the educator Caleb Phillips taught a shorthand correspondence course in 1728. (Wikipedia) Only recently has the phenomenon begun to be widespread. Types of distance learning include such methods as correspondence courses, internet learning, and television broadcasts. Online learning is certainly one of the most popular channels of distance education.

TEACHING ADULT LEARNERS IN THE UNIVERSITY

Much research has been conducted regarding teaching adult learners at the university level. According to a 2006 study, over 3 million students are currently participating in at least some type of online coursework. (Allen and Seaman, 5) This constitutes around 17 percent of the entire higher education student population. (Allen and Seaman, 5) Colleges and universities are responding to this amazing level of demand by offering many more courses online. According to the same study, over 96 percent of institutions with 15,000 or more enrollments, offer some form of online courses or programs. (Allen and Seaman, 8) Academic leaders are beginning to show more affinity toward online education. This study reports that in 2006, 58.4 percent of academic leaders surveyed believed that online education is critical to the long-term strategy of their institution. This is up from 48.8 percent in 2003. (Allen and Seaman, 9) Such statistics as these indicate a growing trend toward more positive attitudes for distance education.

Which method is better: traditional or distance learning? After analyzing test scores, age, preferred learning styles, homework, research papers, exam scores, and course grades, the 1999 study concluded that "distance education can be just as good as traditional face-to-face education." The study revealed that although "no significant differences were found between pre-test scores, homework grades, research paper grades, and final course grades," distance education students actually scored higher in the other three categories. (Tucker) While employing both similar and dissimilar methods of education, both traditional and distance learning seem to produce comparable results.