The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, has urged tertiary institutions across the country to phase out satellite campuses, describing them as unsustainable and inefficient.

Speaking on Friday at a Tertiary Education Trust Fund one-day strategic engagement with heads of institutions, bursars, and directors of procurement in Lagos, Alausa said the Federal Government was determined to streamline tertiary education for improved efficiency and value.

?Don?t play politics with education. Those with satellite campuses, look at how you can congregate them into one campus. We want to get maximum value for every fund, and tertiary institutions should be value-driven. Migrate away from satellite campuses,? he urged the heads of the institutions.

Alausa disclosed that a new policy direction barring institutions with fewer than 2,000 students from accessing funding from TETFund was underway.

?We are re-evaluating how institutions benefit from TETFund. We can no longer incentivise poor performance or underutilisation.

?Several polytechnics established as far back as 2019 have only between 350 to 550 students enrolled, yet they receive the same level of funding as institutions with over 18,000 students. This is inefficient and unsustainable.?

?Therefore, we have set a new benchmark: any institution that, after five years of operation, still has fewer than 2,000 students may be deemed ineligible for TETFund support until they scale up their capacity,? he explained.

The minister noted that the engagement session with heads of southern-zone beneficiary institutions of TETFund, including directors of procurement, was part of efforts to review the 2024/2025 intervention guidelines and promote more transparent and collaborative funding practices.

Alausa also disclosed that the government was cutting down on foreign scholarships in favour of strengthening local academic institutions.

?Our evidence-based analysis showed that 85 per cent of Nigerian students sent abroad on government scholarships never returned to contribute to national development. Many of the programmes they studied could have been handled effectively within our own institutions,? he stated.

To address this, he said the government had established 28 centres of excellence across public and private tertiary institutions, where postgraduate degrees will be awarded and research capacity enhanced.

?These centres will also create jobs, both academic and non-academic, and help build institutional capacity across the country,? he noted.

Speaking at the event, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, said the agency was shifting toward a more sustainable model of funding, one that reduces reliance on government subventions.

?The Fund has been moving toward a more sustainable model of funding. This is in line with the broader objective to reduce institutions? reliance on government subvention and to encourage Public-Private Partnerships, particularly in areas such as hostel development, innovation parks and service facilities,? Echono said.

He warned that institutions that fail to meet performance benchmarks or mismanage funds risk being delisted from the list of TETFund beneficiaries. (The PUNCH)

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