About 10m Students Hit By Suspension Of Part-time Programmes

Stakeholders in the Nigerian education sector have expressed displeasure with the decision of the National Universities Commission (NUC) to suspend part-time programmes in Nigerian universities.
The angst is even more heightened as an
estimated 10 million students, most of them workers, may be affected by the decision.
In arriving at the decision, NUC had argued that the accreditation of 30 courses in the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) would satisfy the needs of this category of Nigerian students who see part-time studies as a way of improving themselves and enhancing their careers.
But experts insisted that NUC must have missed the point if it thought that  accrediting courses in NOUN was the best way to woo candidates into the institution that should have not less than 500,000 students but have been able to attract only about 138,000 due, largely, to its poor image of not being able to graduate its students.
LEADERSHIP gathered that UNIABUJA has already started implementing the decision as about 15,000 forms for new intakes have been withdrawn. This was even as some unscrupulous officials of the institution have continued to sell the forms to unsuspecting prospective students.
The NUC had earlier cancelled the running of part-time programmes in private universities due to what it referred to as the transmission of poor quality standard.
Meanwhile, Youths Empowerment Education initiative (YEEI),a Non Governmental Organisation(NGO) through its chairman, board of trustees, Mr Christopher Edowor, yesterday, condemned the decision of the commission.
In a statement made available to LEADERSHIP, the NGO maintained that “it is not all the universities in the country that are poorly structured in their part- time programmes. So many working class groups in the public sector and private sectors are products of part time programmes run by the universities.”
The group further said “The part- time programmes are designed to enable those working to further their education so as to be more productive in their various fields of endeavours.”
They maintained that it was wrong to suspend all part-time programmes in Nigerian Universities as NUC feels it’s a way of reducing the influx of satellite campuses.
On his part, the general secretary of CSACEFA, Mr Wale Samuel, in a telephone conversation, noted that the decision of the NUC was a good omen for the Nigerian university system and one that was long over-due.
He said, “The Nigerian university system got carried away with access and made no provision for a corresponding quality measure. The measure is good and will ensure standardisation’.
The NUC boss, Monday, at the accreditation of some courses in the Open University said, “For now all part-time programmes are suspended. We are going to streamline them. In effect, we should not have more than 20 percent of the total students’ population on part-time programmes.

-Leadership