Effectiveness of Higher Education Loan Scheme in Financing Tertiary Education in Bayelsa State, Nigeria

This study highlights the effectiveness of Higher Education Loan Scheme in financing tertiary education in Bayelsa State. The research work was anchored by the human capital model and cost-sharing model. The study adopted Raosoft calculator to determine the size of the sample from the population of study and a sample size of 377 respondents was arrived at using the calculator and were distributed amongst students of Bayelsa state origin in higher institutions of learning and retrieved 100 copies. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic shortfall in the total number of retrieved questionnaires had been observed. The distribution of sponsorship across students of Bayelsa state origin reveal that 63% per cent were sponsored by Parent/Guardians, 3% per cent were by Bayelsa Higher Education Students Loan Scheme, 2% per cent are on scholarship while 33% per cent are self-sponsored. The data obtained from the survey were analyzed with SPSS. The Board should relax its policy on provision of guarantors to access loan and concentrate on withholding certificates as collateral. This recommendation is made because majority of the respondents are afraid of their inability to provide guarantors that are willing to guarantee them to access the loan; thereby, moving about with loan forms in search of guarantor until the time frame to access loan for registration would elapse, and that would require them to suspend their studies even with the presence scheme.