Recruiters compete for Nigerian students, youth bulge

Competition for the recruitment of Nigerian students who are seeking high-quality university education in foreign destinations has increased in the past few years because of their ability to pay higher tuition fees in comparison to their counterparts from other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Universities UK International, a body that represents 140 British universities.

In a new report, International Student Recruitment: Why aren’t we second? (Part 2), that was jointly prepared with IDP Connect, a firm that specialises in student marketing and recruitment, researchers highlighted Nigeria as not just a country with the most mobile students in Africa, but one that was likely to become a major source of outbound students globally in the near future.

“At over 200 million people, Nigeria boasts the seventh-largest population in the world and it is projected to become the world’s third-most populous country by 2050 while, currently, more than 40% of the population is under the age of 14,” stated the report.

Quoting statistics from UNESCO, the report noted that, in 2018, Nigeria had 76,338 students that were internationally mobile, with most of them studying in universities in the United States, the UK and Canada, in that order.

According to Stephanie Harris, the head of international engagement at Universities UK International, and Cynthia Gamboa, a market research analyst at IDP Connect, and their associates, recruiters from the US, UK, Canada and Australia are competing for Nigeria’s youth bulge as a way of maintaining, regaining, or developing specific markets.

Largest African economy

What recruiting specialists are not missing is that Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, with its gross domestic product last year standing at US$432 billion, according to the 2021 Economist Intelligence Unit, Nigeria fact sheet, and that many students want to study abroad to avoid university education offered at home, as it is regarded as of low quality and insufficient to prepare graduates for today’s skills and jobs.

In that context, Nigerian students prefer to move abroad, especially to Canada, the UK and the US to study at top universities that offer highly ranked programmes and prestigious degrees.

“Many parents in Nigeria hope that an overseas degree will provide their children with more and better opportunities and, hence, a better life,” stated Harris and her associates in the report.

Paying students

But what has excited outbound higher education markets is the ability of Nigerian students to pay tuition fees, accommodation costs and other living expenses without applying for scholarships as is the case for most other students from Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the report, in the 2019-20 academic year, more than 65% of Nigerian postgraduate students in the UK had no award or financial backing to cover their tuition fees and only 10% used overseas sources to pay for their tuition fees.

About 90% of the Nigerian undergraduate students in the UK had no award or financial backing for their tuition fees and only 4% had a provider waiver or award for their tuition fees.

The issue is that, unlike so many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and, to some extent, Ghana, have a long tradition of families of political, business and cultural elites sending their children to private boarding schools and universities in the UK and, of late, to the US and Canada.

The tradition is based on the notion that education systems abroad are of better quality and parents with the ability to pay had been competing to send their children there for higher education.

According to the report, another consideration for Nigerian parents sending their children abroad for higher education is the availability of post-study work options or even permanent residency that can boost Nigerian students’ employment options back home.

For middle-class and upper-class parents in Nigeria, going to study abroad is based on strength and the hope that a degree from a globally recognised university, international exposure and potential work experience would provide their children with skills that would help them in their future careers.

But, worried that the UK was losing its traditional attractiveness as the first destination of study for Nigeria’s outbound students to the US and Canada and possibly Australia, Universities UK International has proposed a raft of recommendations that include various forms of financial support to talented students and removal of English requirements for Nigerian students, increased promotion of the postgraduate route, as well as engaging alumni in the student recruitment process.

According to Harris and her associates, the competition for outbound students from several key countries has escalated and the UK is on the way to diversifying recruitment markets and increasing international student numbers to at least 600,000 by 2030, and Nigeria is part of that.