Grace Ashiru
In 2018, the Guardian Nigeria reported that more than 190,000 qualified people were turned away from seven public universities in Nigeria. That’s a lot of people who could have gone to college but weren’t allowed to.
And it’s not just an issue at these seven schools. Nigeria’s public colleges are all in trouble. They face several problems, such as a low ratio of teachers to students, bad infrastructure, and ongoing strikes. In a pre-Series C funding round, Norrsken22 and Blue Earth Capital, led by Norrsken22, TymeBank, received $77.8 million. With this new round of funding, TymeBank has now raised more than $260 million in cash.
These problems make it hard for skilled students to attend college and for universities to work well. In a first-of-its-kind move, the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) has given Miva Open University, owned by uLesson, permission to open Nigeria’s first fully online university.
MIVA Open University can now give full Bachelor’s degree programs through Online Distance e-Learning (ODeL) mode; it has this license. The first group of students will start going to college in September 2023.
The take-off courses are Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science, Cyber Security, Data Science, Software Engineering, Accounting, Economics, Business Management, and Public Policy and Administration. The university wants to grow quickly by 2024 to give degrees in important fields like nursing, public health, education, and law.
The opening of Miva Open University is a good step toward solving the problem of Nigerians not being able to get into college. The university will give students who can’t go to traditional universities a much-needed option.
