Skills, Degrees, and the Dangerous Shortcut
Recently, our colleague Dr. Hamisu Adamu Dandajeh shared a troubling story of a young man whose decision has become a kind of parable for our age. A mechanical engineering student with a perfect 4.79 grade point average trying to pack his books, to leave the university, and enrolled in a short ICT training course. These were the kinds of stories that some of our social media influencers would have celebrated a few years ago as a hero of the new order — a bold proof that “skills, not degrees” is the smarter path. His story would have been shared again and again, to show a courageous young man who took the risk to free himself from the shackles of formal education system. As unbelievable as it may sound, this singular act by this first class student raises a troubling question. Can a region like northern Nigeria, already staggering under the weight of failing schools, broken hospitals, insecurity and a fraying civic infrastructure, afford to treat education as optional? I recently told a...