Degrees Without Development: Credentialism and the Crisis of Value in Nigeria

“Nigeria does not lack education! It does not lack degrees, nor does it lack individuals willing to invest in them! What it lacks is a system capable of redeeming those investments in meaningful ways”

Across Nigeria’s public discourse, a striking contradiction has become increasingly visible. On one hand, demand for university education continues to surge. Each year, millions sit for entrance examinations competing for limited spaces in tertiary institutions. According to data, over 2.2 million candidates registered for the 2026 UTME with more candidates scoring above 250 than any previous year since 2013. This highlights sustained pressure on higher education access despite systemic constraints.

On the other hand, a growing chorus “school nah scam,”—school is a scam—especially among young people, dismisses formal education with a blunt refrain. You can’t scroll through social media without running into some variation of “education is a scam”. If education has truly lost its value, why does its demand persist so aggressively? If its value remains intact, why has the public’s faith in it worn so thin? This is not just a clash of opinions, but a real structural paradox, and until we take it seriously, we will keep talking past each other.

What Do We Mean by ‘Education’?

Much of the debate surrounding education in Nigeria collapses distinct concepts into a single and overloaded term. This lack of conceptual clarity weakens both critique and defence.

At least four dimensions need to be separated. First, education can be understood as:

1. Formation: The intellectual and social development of individuals. This includes the cultivation of reasoning, discipline, and civic awareness.
2. Credential system. Degrees, diplomas, and certificates function as gatekeeping devices; they regulate access to jobs and social mobility. Here, the emphasis is not on what one knows, but on what one is certified to have completed.
3. Labour market signal. Employers often use degrees as proxies for ability, diligence, or conformity, even when the degree itself is only loosely related to job performance.
4. Ideology: A widely held belief that formal schooling naturally leads to success, stability, and upward mobility.

Nigeria’s current crisis sits squarely in the gap between these meanings. The credential system and the ideology are both alive and well, but the role of education as a reliable pathway to economic participation has been quietly crumbling for years.

Credentialism Under Constraint

The persistence of degrees despite declining returns can be explained through the logic of credentialism. In countries where access to opportunity is limited, educational qualifications become tools of competition rather than indicators of competence alone. As more individuals obtain degrees, the value of any single degree diminishes. This is a process that is often described as credential inflation. This is evident in Nigeria’s labour market where even entry-level positions increasingly require higher-degree qualifications regardless of job complexity. Today, a position that previously required a secondary school leaving certificate now demands a bachelor’s degree. Jobs that once required bachelor’s degrees now list master’s as “an added advantage.” The jobs have not gotten more complex; they have just gotten more competitive. And so the bar keeps rising.

In Nigeria, this process is intensified by structural constraints. The country produces large numbers of graduates annually, while its economy does not expand at a pace sufficient to absorb the large and growing pool of graduates. Reports on rising graduate unemployment consistently link the problem to structural issues such as underfunding, outdated curricula, and weak alignment between education and labour market needs. As a result, degrees stop functioning as proof of competence and start functioning as filters—ways to cut the applicant list down to a manageable size. This produces a peculiar situation where individuals are compelled to acquire credentials not because those credentials ensure success, but because lacking them guarantees exclusion.

The Education–Employment Disconnect

The gap between education and employment outcomes in Nigeria is not accidental; it is systemic. Over the past decades, tertiary education has expanded significantly. New universities have been established, and enrollment has increased. Yet this expansion has not been matched by corresponding growth in sectors capable of absorbing skilled labour. Graduate unemployment and underemployment remain persistently high, with many degree holders working in roles unrelated to their training or below their qualification level. At the same time, hiring practices remain heavily credential-driven, especially in the public sector and formal private institutions. Job advertisements routinely specify minimum degree requirements, regardless of whether those requirements are strictly necessary for job performance. This reinforces the importance of credentials even as their economic payoff becomes uncertain.

“School nah Scam”: Discourse as Diagnosis

The popular claim that “school is a scam” is often dismissed as ignorance or anti-intellectualism. This dismissal is too convenient. Why don’t we interpret the phrase as a compressed social diagnosis, rather than treating it as a misunderstanding?! That is more productive! The statement does not emerge from nowhere; it reflects lived experiences of disappointment, stagnation, systemic frustration, and perceived betrayal. This sentiment is not isolated. Public reactions to national exam outcomes, particularly the UTME, have repeatedly highlighted concerns about declining educational quality and institutional credibility. Following the 2026 UTME results, public figures and commentators described the outcomes as symptomatic of deeper systemic failure in the education sector.

https://www.facebook.com/valentineokafortobechukwu/posts/pfbid0286iyuiJrz5QFrH3mYxaPwEmUmnVDFJWA9vHEGiry1hTXtoCUWZwsaBJVgqtRHKzml?rdid=MYHbX5vhRMifjfTr

Linguistically, the phrase is striking for its brevity and accessibility. It is expressed in Nigerian Pidgin English, which is the most understood language in Nigeria, thereby carrying an immediacy and authority that formal critiques lack. Its rhetorical force lies in its ability to condense complex structural frustrations into a simple and repeatable slogan.

Socially, the phrase indexes several overlapping realities:

• frustration with graduate unemployment,
• distrust in institutions,
• and disillusionment with the promise of meritocratic advancement.

However, the statement also performs an ideological function. It shifts attention away from structural constraints such as funding deficits, labour market saturation, and policy inconsistency toward the educational system as an isolated object of blame. In this sense, the claim is neither entirely false nor entirely accurate. It is better understood as a misdirected truth: a critique that identifies real dysfunction but misattributes its primary cause.

Why Demand Persists

If public confidence in education is declining, why does demand for degrees remain so strong?

The answer lies in the structural necessity of credentials. In Nigeria, a degree has become less of an advantage and more of a baseline requirement for formal participation in the labour market. Without it, access to formal employment is restricted. Education also functions as risk management in an uncertain and volatile economy. Obtaining a degree is perceived as a way of preserving future options. Even when those options are uncertain, the absence of a degree produces near-certain exclusion.

Beyond economic considerations, degrees carry social significance. They confer legitimacy, status, and recognition within families and communities. They influence perceptions of respectability and can shape opportunities one receives. Institutionally, the persistence of credential requirements across sectors reinforces this demand structure. Thus, the persistence of demand is not evidence of irrational belief in education’s value; it is a rational response to a system in which the cost of exclusion outweighs the uncertainty of inclusion.

The Missing Link: Political Economy

The failure to translate educational expansion into development cannot be understood without examining the broader political economy. As highlighted before, Nigeria’s persistent graduate unemployment crisis has been linked to structural issues such as underfunding, outdated curricula, and weak practical orientation in education systems. First, Nigeria’s industrial base remains limited. Without robust sectors in manufacturing, technology, and research-intensive industries, the demand for highly skilled labour remains constrained. Second, policy inconsistency undermines long-term planning and investment. Economic initiatives are frequently disrupted by shifts in governance, reducing the stability necessary for sustained development.

Third, access to capital remains a significant barrier. While entrepreneurship is often promoted as an alternative pathway, the structural conditions required for successful enterprise, including funding, infrastructure, and regulatory support, are unevenly distributed. Fourth, the dominance of the informal economy means that a large proportion of economic activity operates outside formal structures where credentials typically hold value. In such contexts, practical experience, networks, and adaptability often outweigh formal qualifications. These factors collectively produce an environment in which education cannot easily translate into development outcomes. The issue is not that education is irrelevant, but that it operates within a system that limits its capacity to generate value.

A Crisis of Value

The narrative that “school nah scam” is analytically inadequate. It isolates education from the systems within which it operates and assigns blame to the most visible institution rather than the underlying structure. A more accurate framing recognises that the value chain connecting education to economic and social outcomes has been disrupted. Education continues to produce credentials and, in many cases, knowledge. What is missing or what remains weak is the set of institutional conditions required to convert these into productive and developmental outcomes. This reframing has important implications. It shifts the focus from reforming education in isolation to addressing the broader ecosystem in which education is embedded. It also challenges the tendency to moralise the issue, either by defending education as inherently valuable or dismissing it as entirely useless.

Nigeria does not lack education! It does not lack degrees, nor does it lack individuals willing to invest in them! What it lacks is a system capable of redeeming those investments in meaningful ways. Degrees persist because they remain structurally necessary, even as their material payoff declines. The result is not ignorance but a rational crisis of belief. To describe school as a scam is to misidentify the problem. But to dismiss that claim outright is to ignore the conditions that make it plausible. The challenge, therefore, is not to defend education in the abstract, but to confront the structural misalignments that have severed the link between credentials and development. Until we do that work, Nigeria will keep producing degrees without producing development, and a generation increasingly uncertain about what those degrees are worth.