Different challenges facing higher education in Nigeria have been identified as responsible for the harvest of poor quality education which hinders the achievement of sustainable development.

One challenge and perhaps the greatest facing higher education is inadequate funding by federal, states and local governments while the need to improve the quality of education also pose another major challenge.

The third is the problem of access which is a function of three basic considerations: Availability of school and its physical proximity to a child's home, the running of the school as a teaching - learning centre and the value attached to the school by the community both in terms of its worthwhile perspective of what is taught and the credibility of those who impart knowledge.

This is the position of three teachers of Science and Technology education in a paper entitled: "The Need for a New Perspective: Creating E-Learning Environments In Our Higher Education Institutions for the Sustainable Development of Science, Technology and Mathematics Education in Nigeria."

According to the teachers, Drs. Ayodele Ogunleye, C.O. Oke and B.F. Adeoye of the Department of Science and Technology Education, University of Lagos, the problem of poor infrastructures, lack of teaching and learning materials as well as that of inappropriate/irrelevant curriculum constitute other challenges facing higher education in Nigeria.

Explaining that e-learning is one of the main ways of overcoming some of the key challenges in accessing education, the educationists also identified some major obstacles to the use of new technologies in our higher educational institutions and the wider community.

The first of these challenges to the use of electronic learning in Nigeria, according to them, is poor infrastructure. Nigeria, they say, lacks the infrastructural facilities for the full scale deployment of e-learning facilities, adding that apart from high cost of using technology and maintaining them, telephone density in the rural areas is still low while Internet access is concentrated only in urban centres and a few higher learning institutions.

According to the paper, "most of the telephones in the urban areas are within offices rather than households.

This situation calls for institutions of higher learnings and the private sector to prioritise investments in this sector in order to accelerate growth in offering e-Learning Education programmes as well as enhancing delivery of educational content in general.

Teacher education, which is the single most important factor in ensuring the successful use of ICT in education, is, according to the educationists, often overlooked or underestimated in the development of initiatives for introducing these technologies into our educational institutions, with the result that many projects fail outright or are never developed to their full potential.

This obstacle can be overcome by introducing two levels or types of training for teachers. These are: An introduction to the technologies and preparation to operate and manage the hardware and training in the pedagogical use of the technologies.

The paper also touches on teachers' attitude, explaining that they are likely to resist the introduction of ICTs into the classroom for a variety of reasons.

It says: "Their unfamiliarity with the technologies, the additional time and effort necessary for their effective use, and perhaps the feeling that ICTs pose a threat to their professional role and image, are some of the reasons for this resistance," recommending that there should be a constantly involvement of teachers in the logistics of implementation, courseware preparation, experimentation and piloting of the e-learning system.

Another obstacle to the use of ICTs in Nigeria's higher institutions is the high cost of hardware and software which still remain considerable for many higher educational institutions. The paper says further:

"In addition to ordinary maintenance costs, the rapid evolution of information and communication technologies implies constant upgrading of equipment and facilities if our highest educational institutions are to keep abreast of these developments in the classroom. the cost of on-line telephone charges for use of the Internet remains high and it is a major deterrent to the use of Internet in many institutions,"

Also identified as an obstacle to the use of ICTs is lack of expertise and skilled manpower.

The limited resources of Nigeria, like most other developing countries, says the educationists, mean that the country usually has neither the local capacity to develop the necessary human resources in this field nor the means to attract highly skilled and expensive experts from abroad, adding that skilled manpower for the administration of the e-learning environment's technical issues is crucial to the success of the methodology.

Problems of conflict with curriculum, lack of information as well as problem which teachers face in content development are other obstacles which face the deployment of ICTs in our higher institutions.