Students Push Back as Federal Government Moves to Review ‘Irrelevant’ University Courses

A growing debate is taking place across Nigerian campuses following the Federal Government’s plan to phase out university courses it considers less relevant to the country’s economic needs.

The proposal has not gone down well with some student leaders and undergraduates, who argue that scrapping academic disciplines because they are not seen as immediately useful to the economy could do more harm than good.

The controversy followed recent comments by the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, who described several university disciplines, particularly some courses in the social sciences, as irrelevant to Nigeria’s current economic direction. The Minister also suggested that students studying such programmes should not benefit from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).

For students already enrolled in these courses, the comments have raised an obvious concern: What happens to those who have already spent years studying them?

That question is now at the centre of the conversation.

Students Say the Problem Is Bigger Than the Courses

Comrade Salako Olawale Ayomipo, Executive Director of Special Duties for the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Southwest Zone D, believes the government may be looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

Ayomipo, who is also a Master's student at Tai Solarin Federal University of Education, argued that describing entire disciplines as irrelevant ignores some of the deeper problems within Nigeria's labour market.

He pointed to fields such as Economics, Political Science, Sociology and Psychology, which he said remain relevant both in Nigeria and internationally.

His argument is that the value of a degree should not simply be measured by how quickly graduates find jobs in Nigeria.

Many Nigerian graduates who studied these subjects have gone on to build successful careers abroad, he noted. If graduates from these disciplines can compete successfully in other countries, then the question may not be whether the courses are useful, but whether Nigerian universities are preparing students properly for today's workplace.

That distinction is important.

A degree programme can have value while still having an outdated curriculum.

The Curriculum May Need to Catch Up

For Ayomipo, the answer is not to scrap departments but to bring them up to date.

The world students are graduating into today is very different from the one many university curricula were originally designed for. Technology has changed the workplace, employers expect practical skills and many industries now require graduates to understand digital tools alongside their traditional academic knowledge.

Rather than removing courses, Ayomipo believes universities should modernise their programmes by incorporating technology, practical learning and industry-relevant skills.

In other words, the problem may not be what students are studying but how they are being taught.

A Sociology student, for example, can still benefit from learning traditional sociological theories. But that student could also be taught how to analyse data, conduct digital research, use modern research tools and apply sociological knowledge to real-world problems.

The same principle can apply to Psychology, Economics, Political Science, English and many other disciplines.

The debate, Ayomipo argued, should therefore focus on reform rather than elimination.

‘No Knowledge Is a Waste’

Another NANS leader, Comrade Ojetola Babatunde Yussuf, Southwest Secretary General of NANS Zone D, also disagreed with the idea of scrapping courses simply because they are not considered economically relevant at the moment.

His position is straightforward: no knowledge is a waste.

Yussuf argued that university courses can be reformed to reflect the needs of the modern economy without completely removing them.

He also raised concerns about the suggestion that NELFUND loans should be restricted for students studying certain disciplines.

NELFUND was established to help Nigerian students access higher education, and Yussuf believes that access to the loan should not depend on the student's chosen field of study.

For students from families that cannot easily afford university expenses, an education loan can make the difference between staying in school and dropping out.

Restricting access based on a course, therefore, could have consequences beyond the policy itself.

Students Already Feel the Anxiety

While policymakers debate the future of certain university programmes, students currently enrolled in those programmes are dealing with the uncertainty firsthand.

For Alaran Halima, a 400-level Psychology student at the University of Lagos, the possibility of losing access to student loans because of her chosen discipline would be particularly worrying.

She believes it is unfair to penalise students who have already spent several years working towards their degrees because the government has now decided that their programmes are no longer sufficiently relevant.

At the same time, Halima agrees that there are problems with some university curricula.

She described her own experience studying Psychology as being heavily focused on theory, with limited opportunities for practical learning.

“I think my curriculum is outdated. I am studying Psychology and we do more theoretical learning than practical which should not be. The only saving grace is internships, which my school does not even offer.”

Her experience highlights one of the central issues in the debate.

Students may not necessarily be asking the government to leave university courses exactly as they are. Many are asking for those courses to be better.

More internships, practical training, modern learning materials and stronger connections between universities and employers could make graduates more prepared for the workplace.

English Students Raise Similar Concerns

The concerns are not limited to the social sciences.

Agha Virginia, a 400-level English student, also described the labelling of certain courses as unfair.

She raised concerns about the reading materials used in her department, arguing that the reading lists do not adequately reflect the realities of modern African literature.

Her criticism points to another part of the curriculum debate: relevance is not only about the name of a degree.

A course can remain valuable while the content being taught within it becomes outdated.

English remains relevant to communication, publishing, media, education, writing, technology and several other areas. But students need to be exposed to contemporary literature, digital communication and the changing ways language is used in today's world.

The same argument can be applied across many disciplines.

Should Universities Scrap Courses or Fix Them?

At the heart of the debate is a difficult question: Should Nigeria remove university courses that appear less connected to the economy, or should it modernise them?

For the students and NANS representatives who have spoken out, the answer is clear.

They want reform.

There is little disagreement that Nigerian universities need to produce graduates with skills that employers actually need. The disagreement is over how to achieve that.

Scrapping a course may appear to be a quick solution, but it does not necessarily address the underlying problem. If the real issue is outdated teaching methods, weak industry connections, limited internships or inadequate digital training, removing the degree programme does not solve any of those problems.

A better approach could be to examine individual programmes, identify gaps and redesign their curricula around modern realities.

Students could still learn the foundations of their disciplines while gaining practical skills that make them more employable.

The Bigger Conversation About Nigerian Education

The current debate goes beyond a list of courses.

It raises a bigger question about what Nigerian universities should be preparing students for.

Should universities focus only on producing graduates for the jobs that exist today, or should they also give students the knowledge and critical-thinking skills to create new opportunities?

There is value in both approaches.

Nigeria certainly needs graduates with practical, technical and digital skills. But it also needs economists who understand how economies work, psychologists who understand human behaviour, political scientists who can analyse governance, sociologists who can study social change and writers and communicators who can shape ideas.

A modern economy needs different kinds of knowledge working together.

For students, the hope is that the current conversation will lead to better education rather than fewer educational opportunities.

Modernising curricula, expanding internships, improving university facilities, strengthening links with industry and introducing more technology into learning could help graduates become more competitive without forcing them to abandon entire fields of study.

The debate may have started with the question of which courses are “relevant”, but perhaps the more useful question is this:

How can Nigerian universities make the courses students are already studying more relevant to the world they will graduate into?

That is a question worth answering—not just for students in Psychology, English, Economics or Political Science, but for the future of Nigerian higher education itself.