The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has rejected the National Universities Commission’s Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards.
According to the union, it is a nightmare, a threat to quality university education, and an erosion of the university Senate in Nigerian universities.
According to a statement signed by ASUU’s national president, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, on Friday, it was inexplicable that NUC pre-packaged 70% CCMAS contents were being imposed on the Nigerian University System, while university Senates, which are statutorily responsible for academic program development, were left to work on only 30%.
It stressed that there were growing concerns about the numerous shortcomings and gross inadequacies of the CCMAS documents.
“ASUU is well aware that the NUC is responsible for defining academic standards and ensuring quality at the NUS. Section 10(1) of the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions) Act, Cap E3, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, mandates the NUC to establish minimum standards for all universities and other degree awarding institutions in the Federation, as well as to conduct accreditation of their degrees and other academic awards.
“However, the process of establishing the standard is as important (if not more important) as what is produced as “minimum standards.”
“In this case, the NUC recently churned out CCMAS documents containing 70% curricular content in 17 academic fields with little or no input from the universities through some hazy procedures.” The academic disciplines covered are (i) Administration and Management, (ii) Agriculture, (iii) Allied Health Sciences, (iv) Architecture, (v) Arts, (vi) Basic Medical Sciences, (vii) Computing, (viii) Communication and Media Studies, (ix) Education, (x) Engineering and Technology, (xi) Environmental Sciences, (xii) Law, (xiii) Medicine and Dentistry, (xiv) Pharmaceutical Science, (xv) Sciences, (xvi) Social Sciences, and (xvii) Veterinary Medicine,” it read partly.
It stressed that many university administrators, though dissatisfied, were shying away from making public comments on CCMAS.
However, the statement indicated that some university Senates did not hide their displeasure with the NUC’s ongoing efforts to impose CCMAS on Nigerian institutions.
“The CCMAS is a nightmare model of curriculum reengineering,” it said. It is an outlier to the Nigerian university system. Both the process and the content of the CCMAS documents are flawed. There is no basis for the 70% “untouchable CCMAS,” which can not stand the tests of university Senates.”
It did, however, urge that “NUC should encourage universities, as the University of Ibadan is doing now, to propose innovations for the review of their programs.” Proposals from various institutions should then be Sieved and synthesised by more qualified expert teams in order to review current BMAS documents and/or create new ones as appropriate.
“The difference here is the bottom-up approach, as opposed to the CCMAS’s top-down or take-it-or-leave-it model.”
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