ASUU opposes NUC academic standards

The National Universities Commission’s Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards have been rejected by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). These standards were prepared by the National Universities Commission.

According to the union, it is a nightmare, a danger to receiving a high-quality education at a university, and an infringement on the authority of the university Senate in Nigerian universities.

Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, the national president of ASUU, issued a statement on Friday in which he expressed his opinion that it was inexplicable that NUC pre-packaged 70 percent of CCMAS contents were being imposed on the Nigerian University System. In the statement, he said that university Senates, which are statutorily responsible for academic programme development, were left to work on only 30 percent of the content.

According to the statement, there were rising worries about the various flaws and fundamental deficiencies that were present in the CCMAS documents.

According to the statement, “ASUU is not uninformed that it is within the remit of the NUC to set academic standards and ensure quality in the NUS.” According to the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions) Act, Cap. E3, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, the National Universities Commission (NUC) is “enjoined to lay down the minimum standards for all universities and other degree awarding institutions in the Federation and conduct the accreditation of their degrees and other academic awards.”

It was pointed out that the process of establishing the standard is just as significant, if not more important, than the actual “minimum standards” that are produced.

ASUU stated that the NUC has recently, through some hazy procedures, churned out CCMAS documents containing 70% of the curricular contents in 17 academic fields with little or no input from the universities, highlighting the fact that the academic disciplines covered are as follows: administration and management, agriculture, allied health sciences, architecture, arts, basic medical sciences, computing, communication and media studies, education, engineering and technology, environmental sciences, laguage studies, and legal studies. ASUU further stated that

It was revealed that many university administrators, despite being unsatisfied, were hesitating to make public remarks on CCMAS, and it was said that several university Senates did not disguise their unhappiness with the continued efforts by the NUC to impose CCMAS on Nigerian universities. However, it was stated that many university administrators were hesitating to make public comments on CCMAS.

It was pointed out that the CCMAS documents are defective in both the method and the content, and it was argued that the CCMAS is a nightmare model of curriculum reengineering as an aberration to the Nigerian University System. There is no basis for the 70% “untouchable CCMAS,” which cannot withstand the test of serious scrutiny from university Senates.

It was suggested that the NUC should encourage universities, similar to what is currently being done by the University of Ibadan, to propose innovations for the review of their programmes. It was also suggested that proposals from across universities should then be sieved and synthesised by more competent expert teams in order to review the existing BMAS documents and/or create new ones as necessary.

It was stated that the bottom-up strategy, in contrast to the top-bottom model or the “take-it-or-leave-it” paradigm of the CCMAS, is what makes this situation unique.