The destiny of more than 16,000 Nigerian students in the United States is as of now remaining in a precarious situation as the U.S. Migration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moves to deport foreign students whose schools will change to online classes due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The development, however, has drawn the ire of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which blamed the Federal Government for neglecting Nigeria’s educational system.
The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), which is controlled by ICE, in another standard discharged on Monday, had said outside nationals taken a crack at U.S. instructive organizations should move to face to face schools or take online classes outside the nation. Else, they will be ousted. Additionally, the Department of State will no longer issue visas for understudies to go to schools that offer online classes as it were.
The announcement peruses to some degree:
“The U.S. Branch of State no longer issues visas to understudies joined up with schools or projects that are completely online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection grant such understudies to enter the United States.
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“Dynamic understudies who are as of now in the United States and took on such projects must leave the nation or take different measures, for example, moving to a school with face to face guidance to stay in legal status. If not, they should confront migration consequences.”
In a meeting with The Guardian, ASUU President Prof. Abiodun Ogunyemi reviewed with lament “a period outside understudies were coming to Nigerian colleges. Understudies were originating from South Africa, Egypt, and Ghana.”
As per him,
“Today, the opposite is the situation. In Ghana, the greater part of the outside understudies there are Nigerians. In this way, we can see that they are simply reaping our assets to subsidize their tertiary instruction. For what reason should Nigerians be setting off to the Republic of Benin, Cameroon, Togo, and Sudan to look for college training, not to talk of U.S.?”
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ASUU’s unending strikes are in light of a legitimate concern for understudies and their folks, he demanded, focusing on that all the association is stating is: “Fix our labs, stock our libraries, remodel our workshops, flexibly offices for e-learning and give structures. Are those not the things they are getting a charge out of there?”
The ASUU President said further:
“Of course, the ruling class that can afford it are those sending their children to those distant places in America and Europe. The children of the poor are left to attend universities that are without facilities, universities that are not adequately staffed, and universities whose capacity for research have been dwindling. We think this is an opportunity for the Federal Government to sit back and address the problems in our university education and indeed Nigerian education as a whole.”
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Additionally, previous Minister of Education Prof. Chinwe Obaji thought about how courses like engineering and sciences that require practicals would be educated on the web. He approached government to make the colleges alluring to Nigerian understudies abroad by handling its numerous difficulties, including that COVID-19 is an impermanent difficulty, which all countries would overcome at the appointed time.
On his part, Prof. Ayodeji Olukoju, previous Vice Chancellor at Caleb University, Imota, stated: “truly this circumstance is unconventional. It is uncommon. It isn’t practical. At the appropriate time, we will vanquish it. We once vanquished the pandemic in 1819, Ebola, and we will most likely overcome COVID-19.
Nothing is perpetual. The facts demonstrate that internet instructing would consistently proceed however it can never remove the issues of eye to eye communication. For instance, those understudies studying engineering in American colleges and lab-based sciences, would they do each one of those things from a separation?”
He included:
“We ought to change our educational plan to mirror the truth, primarily that we need to depend to an ever increasing extent, presently, on online learning. Furthermore, we have to give more foundation of internet learning, ICT framework basically.
“Thirdly, we need to prepare individuals who can deal with the foundation and the individuals who need to instruct on the stage since you can’t educate on the stage the manner in which you instruct in regular study halls. This is definitely not a lasting circumstance yet the world needs to adjust to it.”
Most U.S. universities and colleges have not yet declared their arrangements for the fall semester yet various schools are taking a gander at a half and half model of face to face and online guidance while a few, including Harvard University, have said all classes will be led on the web.
Nigeria as of now has the most noteworthy number of understudies from Africa concentrating in the U.S. As per U.S. Movement and Customs Enforcement, Nigeria had 16,039 understudies as at 2019.
The office stated:
“There are more than 36,000 understudies from Sub-Saharan Africa concentrating in the U.S. As of March 2019, there were 16,039 understudies from Nigeria studying in the United States with 54 percent male and 46 percent female.
“This is an expansion of 3,342 understudies more than 12,693 understudies recorded in November 2018. College understudies established 34 percent; Masters understudies 36 percent; doctorate framed 12 percent; while associate was 12 percent. Non-degree and others formed five percent.”
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As per the organization, the main five states for Nigerian understudies in the U.S. incorporate Texas with 2,713; California, 856 understudies; Maryland, 827 understudies; New York, 818 understudies; and Florida, 753 understudies.
Additionally, the more than 16,000 Nigerians right now studying in the U.S. contributed $514 million to the U.S. economy in 2018, as per official information from the 2019 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange discharged by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the U.S. Branch of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
The report indicates that Nigeria was the 11th leading place of origin for foreign students in the U.S. as of the 2018/2019 session. It accounted for 1.2 per cent of the total number of 1,095,299 international students in the country.
A breakdown of the figure shows that 5,689 of Nigerian understudies were at the undergrad level; 5,274 at graduate level; 367 were non-qualification understudies; and 2,093 were on Optional Practical Training (OPT).
