S. A. David: "The University is a Distraction."

One would agree that the quest for university education in +Nigeria in the past decade until now is of a ravenous nature; like greedy children jostling for a limited volume of chocolate. Nevertheless, the number of secondary school graduates who fight for the attainment of university education – or other higher institutions of learning- do so for a myriad of intentions, with a very high percentage of that myriad of intentions being ulterior.
One must needs not be surprised when one’s ears learns of the innumerable ulterior intentions or reasons: one must go to the university so as to earn a lot of money after graduation; one should strive to acquire a degree so that one can have more opportunity in the labour market; one should strive for university admission so that one can have a better opportunity of meeting with the children of the society’s crème de la crème; one should go to college so that one can live a healthier and happier life…and the list continues.
 It is not a warped idea if one wants to earn a six-figure fixed regular wage; and neither is it wrong to be ambitious nor aspire to work closely with people who are different in terms of religion, ethnicity, politics or other orientation- which in turn endows one with the skill of being able to survive in several environments later- and never will it be wrong under the firmament for one to want a utopian life.
Alas, it is not the case! Going to the university and acquiring a degree is vaguely a means to an end. Being a university graduate does not guarantee one being the richest one under heaven. It is not an assurance that one would escape from the enclave of a seemingly never-ending unemployment. It will never be a warranty that one would be healthier and happier. Moreover, there are people with all manner of qualifications who still earn below the scale. Countless youths who have bagged a university degree, or degrees, remain unemployed in our dearly delightful country where opportunities abound. And it is unempirical to assert that going to the university improves one’s health or assures a happy life.
Now, time for brief real-life references: Oscar-winning actress, +Halle Berry, never attended a college or university. After high school, she moved to Chicago to pursue a career in Modeling. Billionaire and founder of Virgin Atlantic Airlines and other Virgin enterprises, +Richard Branson, was a high school drop-out at sixteen. +Adele, or +Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, singer and multi-instrumentalist, intended going to college but signed a recording deal just after high school graduation. Founder of Dell Computers, +Michael Dell, dropped out of the University of Texas to run the company.
One would be quick to denigrate the previous paragraph for being replete with Western Personalities domiciled in a totally different sphere where things work; and ostracized from this age.
Looking into our sphere where things do not work: there is +Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who gave up studying Medicine after eighteen months for a degree in Communications and Political Science, and later Creative Writing, and she is successful in all. Yes, in all! +Okechukwu Anthony Onyegbule studied Agricultural Engineering in the university and turned out to be actor and comedian- +Okey Bakassi- and in October 2008 to August 2011 he was Senior Special Assistant, or SSA, on Entertainment to the Governor of Imo State. There is +Linda Ikeji, an English graduate, who after several unyielding adventures became a media entrepreneur and blogger. Is it +Frank Nneji who abandoned his Biological Sciences degree which he bagged from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and founded Associated Bus Company, or ABC Transport? Or +Jason Njoku after graduating with a second class upper degree in Chemistry and abandoned it to found +IROKO TV- a web platform which provides Nigerian movies, free and unpaid, on-demand? Or the dental surgeon who abandoned looking into patients’ dental cavities for a better option of making them shine their teeth when he sings? He is +Sidney Onoriode Esiri or +Dr. SID.
“But these ones saw the four walls of a university!” One would be rapid in snapping. And the answer is yes. They did see the four walls of a university which failed to shape their future- the university whose certificate could not contribute, in a sense, to what they turned out to be. In this light, one would be right to concur with +Sharon Daniels, author of The World of Truth, when “[she] came to conclude that [she] could not find real knowledge in academic life, only hierarchies of knowledge that led, ultimately to more hierarchies, not to more knowledge. [She] began to see university learning as limited, human and relative. What was absolutely up-to-date and not infinite and timeless.”
Yes the university is perhaps a distraction. Imagine the years it sapped from the aforementioned graduates who - after working their heads to the grey and white matters - had to find another means to an end. Those years, if they were spent on what they later turned out to be would have yielded something tremendous. Here, one would be right in agreeing, to an extent, with Stella’s lines in the 2010 youth culture alternative movie, +Kaboom. She said: “[the university] is just an intermission between [secondary school] and the rest of your life. Four years of having sex, making stupid mistakes, and experiencing stuff. It’s a pit stop, and not the coming of the messiah.”
This piece is not a demonization of the university but to show [her] her place. Good things can still happen to one if one goes to university. Getting a degree will help one get a job but it does not do much to help one create jobs; and in the world as of today, those with the real money are those who create jobs. One cannot learn all what one needs to know in the university but one can learn enough to form a framework for the future with the seemingly unnecessary knowledge gained. After all, no knowledge is a waste. But one must have in mind that the university will not deliver to one what one needs the most.
And what do we need the most? 
Creative answers to the challenges that bedevil us today and now.