Early this year, a bug seemed to have bitten Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi, a postdoctoral fellow in mycology at Canada’s University of British Columbia. As a native of Nigeria, he often found himself fielding questions from young people from his country about how to further their studies in the West.
Among the many barriers they reported facing, from absurdly difficult to obtain visas to the scarcity of financial assistance, one seemed especially irksome: Students from Nigerian universities were commonly being told that they had to pass an English language test as part of their application just for the mere honor of being considered. Since then, with some success, Igbalajobi has led a social media campaign to prod universities in Canada and the United States with such requirements to lift them for Nigerian students.
