MARKETING EDUCATION: THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

Marketing Education in Developing Countries: The Nigerian Experience

Marketing Education in Developing Countries: The Nigerian Experience

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

There has been a significant trend that international studies of higher education have increased in the late 20th and early 21st century. This expansion has taken place since developing countries had the urge to educate their population and had a need for well educated citizens, but also since certain, less developed countries did not have the possibility to offer their own citizens the same educational opportunities. This can also be seen in accordance with increased traveling. A fast growing segment is international master students, which from universities point of view might be interesting to attract. But is this acknowledged by universities, and if so: what image is portrayed and how is it communicated to the target audience? With those considerations in mind the purpose of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding about how Swedish universities position themselves towards international master students.The results show that positioning toward international master students is a somewhat neglected area. The undertaken case study implicates that there are uncertainties regarding responsibility and organization structure. Universities might also need to increase the knowledge regarding different segments so that the needs of the students' best can be matched with what the university offers since the present overall positioning strategy might be too general. Therefore, a recommendation is to develop a strategy for positioning toward international master students. It used to be predictable that education plays a positive role in development and national integration. School curricula and environments were credited with promoting cross-cultural understanding and breaking barriers to national integration such as language, customs and religion. Evidence from several case studies however suggests that the relationship between education and national integration is not linear (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). The divergent attitudes of communal groups to the language, contents and outcomes of instruction are significant intervening variables that determine whether education will become a harbinger of accord or discord in plural societies. This article focuses on the issue of access to education.

It suggests that education tends to engender identity mobilisation and conflict in contexts where it offers differential prospects for socio-economic and political empowerment among sub-national units. More pointedly, there is no peace dividend where education is perceived to aggravate or alleviate group inequality. It draws theoretical inspiration from the concept of horizontal inequalities, which posits a causal link between unequal access of religious, ethnic, racial or communal groups to social, economic and political resources and group mobilisation and conflicts (Stewart, 2002). It addresses the role of education in generating or mitigating inequality and its impact on ethnic relations with evidence from Nigeria.

As in most plural societies, access to education in Nigeria has been politicised because of its perceived role in giving birth to or eliminating political and socio-economic inequalities. The article assesses the attempts by successive Nigerian governments at federal and state levels to expand access to and enhance equity in educational opportunities as well as ...