On the Relationship between Education Reforms and Sustainable Development: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria between 1980 and 2018 shows a mixed relationship between education reforms and sustainable development. In 2016, over 45 percent of Nigerian graduates are unemployed and about a 39.4 percent increase in education enrolment rate had resulted in stagnated economic sustainable development in Nigeria. Following the endogenous growth theory and the environmental Kuznets hypothesis underpinnings, this study investigated the cause and effect of education reforms and sustainable development in Nigeria between 1980 and 2018. The descriptive statistics employed describe the data distribution of the included variables while the vector error correction model (VECM) econometric technique was used to determine the short-run and long-run impact of education reforms on economic, social, and environmentally sustainable development in Nigeria. The results found that qualitative education reform has a positive impact on economic and environmentally sustainable development while quantitative education has a negative impact on socially sustainable development in the long run. Further, the short-run, VECM results revealed that qualitative education reforms will speedily affect economic, social, and environmentally sustainable development than the quantitative education reforms within the period of study. The study recommends that quantity and quality education reforms should be seen as complementary and not a substitute in achieving sustainable development by the year 2030 in Nigeria.