Private institutions have an organized system that works for the students, staff and lecturers and that the environment is conducive enough for them.
By Folayemi Oladimeji
The prominent difference between public vs private universities is that public universities are usually provided with funding by the state government while private universities get their funding from private ventures, investors and tuition fees.
A public university offers affordable courses and programs, you might as well find government scholarships and financial aid schemes provided by such universities.
In Nigeria, many parents are choosing to give their children the experience of a private university. The reason is not far to fetch – no interruptions in the education of their wards as a result of strikes or other industrial standoffs. Many of them also have reputations for maintaining high standards for discipline, being more organized, and not being clogged by bureaucracy like in public universities.
READ ALSO
Quality, lower fees, prestige draw Nigerians to foreign universities
Private universities most times enjoy a good security network on campus. This is even more so because the majority of the staff and students live on campus, hence the security of the university community is taken very seriously. This cannot be said about public universities.
Also, when we look at the standards of instruction, infrastructure and quality of students that graduate from public universities compared to private universities over the last 20 years, we can see clearly that private universities have emerged above public universities, and the gap continues to widen.
Obasekola, a student of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, said private institutions are preferable to public institutions in Nigeria. He explained: “The advantage of that of the private institution is more than that of the public institution, in the sense that the public institution is owned and managed by the government so they have accessibilities to low charges of payments and other things that are basically needed in the school which are being provided by the governmental bodies but nevertheless that of the private institution is private and anything private is usually organized and it’s really official.”
He said that private institutions have an organized system that works for the students, staff and lecturers and that the environment is conducive enough for them.
“Pertaining to the educational ground, standard, the private schools are still doing better than the public in the sense that private institutions enrol qualified and experienced lecturers to serve students because you can’t imagine a student going to a private institution, paying a huge amount of money for a session, you can’t compare that kind of huge amount with the lesser amount paid by the public school, the educational quality will be quite different,” he said.
He added: “The issue of strike action has become a normality in our society which has affected students tremendously. It cannot be overrated that this issue of strike action has limited or frustrated some students by which they have no choice but to drop out of school and learn other trades. Someone that is to study a course for just four years, at the end of the day is spending up to eight years for a program that is not more than four years, that is quite frustrating and annoying but private institutions are organized, they follow the academic calendar and they make sure their students have this quality education by which when they get to the outside world, they will be able to use these educational skills acquired to establish themselves and to become reasonable people in the society, so personally I’ll say private institutions are better than public institutions.”
Other aspects that differ between these two types of universities include campus life, student organisations as well as the potential to explore majors and transitional opportunities. The private universities will appeal to a student who wants to be immersed in campus life. There appear to be more student organisations than at public universities. This contributes to a social scene among students, adding to the allure of campus life that will not be found at a public university.
