2.5m Students Enroll on Tertiary Education Research Platform, Says TETFund

Over 2.5 million students have been enrolled in the Tertiary Education, Research, Applications and Services (TERAS), platform provided by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).

Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, disclosed that the platform has excess capacity but public institutions are given the preference of onboarding first before it is extended to private universities.

Echono spoke in Abuja at the 2nd Registrars’ Workshop and 75th Business Meeting of the Association of Registrars of Nigerian Universities (ARNU), with the theme: 'Sustainable Legal Framework as Panacea for Industrial Harmony in the Nigerian University System: Challenges and Remedies'.

The TETFund boss said the fund has enlisted the support of registrars of tertiary institutions and other stakeholders to ensure maximum utilisation of the ICT infrastructure for administrative, research and other purposes by students and staff of their institutions.

“And in fact, I have been threatening our public institutions that because we have excess capacity, if they don’t finish taking them up, we will extend it to private universities, because they are Nigerian students, but we want to give them the opportunity first to finish onboarding their students.

“Currently, we have about 2.4 or 2.5 million students enrolled. But my biggest concern, which is also another advantage of MoUs, is not so much availability, that people are enrolled, we are interested in the usage, how many students are using all these facilities?

TERAS was launched by TETFund in 2023 to provide a “centralised hub for tertiary education services, fostering collaboration, efficiency, and innovation by providing a wide range of capabilities and functionalities for tertiary education institutions, students, researchers, and the entire education ecosystem.”