ASK THE BAKERS
When
bread is half baked, we ask the bakers what went wrong. The bread is never
questioned.
I
therefore submit that when graduates are referred to as half baked, we must ask
the bakers.
There
is a tendency to blame the students and graduates for non performance, but how
can students perform when faced with the “good-news” from tutors who on the
first day of lecture profess that not more than two people will pass the course
out of more than a hundred students and/or that grades A and B are for GOD and
his/her spouse respectively; please what type of motivation is that?
Another
viewpoint is lecture attendance. My question to proponents of haphazard
attendance by tutors is that “is the National Universities Commission (NUC) Benchmark
Minimum Academic Standard (BMAS) useless?”Maybe the NUC should answer that
question. The NUC BMAS stipulates generally that for a course designated one
credit unit, the Lecturer should have a minimum of 15 contact hours for the
semester, implying one hour per week. Proponents of the haphazard attendance
insist that a Lecturer can choose to come only twice in the semester: first, as
introduction of the Lecturer and the course and second, few days to examination
with much bombardment of “resources”. If a Lecturer does not have to come to
class, then students don’t need to leave their homes either. Thank GOD for
Information and Communication Technology (ICT,) we can just stay at home and
send materials and even write our examinations at home. Without disregard for
distance learning students, if an institution has decided to admit students for
a course that requires physical contact, then the Lecturers should be able to
attend classes regularly. Thank GOD for private Universities who enforce
attendance, but how can they also ensure quality assurance? It’s one thing to
attend classes; it is another to deliver good substance.
I am not also in support of viewpoints that insist
that a Lecturer should not give you more than 25% of what you need. My fear is
that some Lecturers don’t have the requisite knowledge and like a popular
parlance “…nemo dat quod non habet”, implying you cannot give what
you don’t have. Please let’s challenge our Lecturers and tutors to stand up to
their responsibilities and make this nation, an academically sound one.
Research
is next. How good are the researches that emanate from our institutions? This last
issue I will like to discuss here is the unnecessary delay postgraduate
students face. One day a Professor told me that these delays make the outcome
of most researches stale. Academics complain that their research findings are
not utilized, but how can they be, when they are stale I thought to myself. A
degree programme that should last 18 months extends to 10 years and the institution
is satisfied and basks in the ingenuity of their false standards. It baffles me
when senior academics use the delay students experience as a measure of
standard performance. The ideal thing is to graduate students at record time
though not half baked, but we miss the psychological trauma of keeping a
candidate for too long and other financial implications.
One
good example is the recent adoption of the International Financial Reporting
Standards (IFRSs) in Nigeria. A postgraduate candidate that has been working
for some years on financial reporting will come to realize that findings of
his/her work has become more useless than necessary, because the nation is
adopting a global set of financial reporting standards.
Academics,
please heed the call to professional competence and due diligence. Bake the
cake well and make our institutions great.
Oladele,
Femi
Department
of Accounting
Bowen
University, Iwo
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