The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Professor AbdulGaniyu Ambali, has identified corruption, policy inconsistencies, over- centralization of control and funding deficiency as some of the factors hampering the growth and development of higher education in developing countries.

Ambali gave the indication while delivering a lecture at the Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

In the  lecture, entitled “Higher Education and Its Challenges in Developing Countries: The Nigeria Experience”, the Vice-Chancellor disclosed that many of the developing countries do not have a national ideology for higher education but they only operate  systems bequeathed to them by their former colonial masters.
He noted that though there were attempts at developing a national ideology, the twin problems of political instability and pervasive corruption have continued to militate against quality higher education in many developing countries.

The Vice-Chancellor, whose lecture was part of  the Nigeria in the World Seminar series, explained that the establishment of the National Universities Commission (NUC) in order to maintain standard has resulted in the Nigerian University Curricula being relatively straight-jacketed.

Ambali stated that there is need for an innovative way of accreditation, defining operational philosophy of Nigerian universities and creating a critical link between  universities and  industries.

He noted that in most developing countries, higher education funding is relatively low compared to developed countries and heavily dependent on government.
Ambali said, “In Nigeria for instance, government expenditure on education is $7.3b for the period 2010-2012; thus averaging about $2.4b annually for the entire education sector”, adding that “Low as this might be, it constitutes 9 per cent of the annual spending by the government. Compare this figure with situations where many mainline Universities in North America and Europe have institutional budgets of over $5b annually”.