Parents' Socio-Economic Status and their Children’s Access to University Education in Edo and Kwara States, Nigeria

Education is said to be an instrument which bridges the gap between the poor and the rich. As a result of this, the study was specifically conducted to determine the influence of socio-economic status on accessing university education in Edo and Kwara state, Nigeria. The population of the study consisted of all parents in Edo and Kwara states and the sample for this study was made up of 200 parents who were civil servants in each state under study, 200 lecturers from private universities in each of the two states making a total of 800 respondents. The study adopted descriptive research design of correlation type. Researcher designed questionnaire titled ‘Socio-Economic Status and Access to University Education Questionnaire (SESAUEQ)’ was used to gather relevant data from the respondents. Four research questions were raised and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of percentage for research questions while Pearson Product Moment Correlation and t-test statistics were used to test the research hypotheses at .05 significance level. The main findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between parent socio-economic status and students access to university education with calculated r- value of (.957) which is greater than critical r- value of (.098). Other findings showed that level of income and poverty had considerable influence on accessing university education in the two states. Also, there was no significant different between parent socio-economic status and their children’s access to university education in Edo and Kwara state. Based on the findings, it was recommended that the Nigerian government should further expand tertiary institutions capacities in terms of structures and contents as the available facilities are seemingly inadequate to cater for the increasing numbers of admission seekers into university institutions. It was also recommended that parents should consider accessing loans from non-interest based cooperative societies as another means of securing access to university education for their children since they have future expectations in terms of education returns. Federal government is also encouraged to extend TETFUND projects to private university enable them to reduce their tuition fees so that children of low income earners have access to university education