China hits close to 99% primary education enrollment with less than 10% university attainment. They put all the good money in primary education because it is the bedrock of any nation.
America does the same with primary and secondary largely free (90% attainment). In the US and China, they massively and extensively subsidize basic education, making sure that quality is high. Want to attend college? Pay for it; loans are available.
In Nigeria, we flip it, subsidizing university education while paying no attention to basic education. That is why a primary school teacher earns $50 per month! #fix
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Sure many of us here benefitted from that massive university subsidy, but if you look at the data over the last few years, one thing is evident: the poor who attend poor primary schools are evidently cut-off from those university subsidies as they cannot compete to be admitted. If that trajectory continues, inequality will keep scaling in the nation.
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And we are producing or churning out wrong products, because the economy is largely artisan, but we are busy graduating people who only function in service based economies.
Train kids on the fundamentals, with hard skills at scale, then those with sophisticated brains can continue racking up degrees and certifications, that is how you build a robust economy.
We will go bankrupt trying to fund tertiary education for most people who shouldn’t have any reason for nearing a university fence, that’s how smart we have always been in this part of the world.
Prof. line here “Sure many of us here benefitted from that massive university subsidy, but if you look at the data over the last few years, one thing is evident: the poor who attend poor primary schools are evidently cut-off from those university subsidies as they cannot compete to be admitted. If that trajectory continues, inequality will keep scaling in the nation.” has a lot of depth. I hope we get the trajectory right as a nation.