The Academic Staff Union of Universities has labelled the newly designed Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards prepared by the National Universities Commission as a threat to quality university education in Nigeria.
ASUU made this known through a statement signed by the national president of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, on Friday.
The body said that it was absurd for NUC to force pre-packaged 70% of the CCMAS contents on the Nigerian University System, leaving university senates, who are legally tasked with developing academic programmes, to work on only 30%.
“ASUU is not unaware that setting academic standards and assuring quality in the NUS is within the remit of the NUC. Section 10(1) of the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions) Act, Cap E3, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, enjoins the NUC 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.
“However, the process of generating the standard is as important (if not more important) than what is produced as “minimum standards”.
“In this instance, the NUC has recently, through some hazy procedures, churned out CCMAS documents containing 70% curricular contents in 17 academic fields with little or no input from the universities. 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 emphasised that despite their dissatisfaction, many university administrators were holding back on publicly criticising CCMAS.
However, the statement showed that certain university Senates were open about their discontent with the NUC’s continuous attempts to force CCMAS on Nigerian universities.
However, it was recommended that “NUC should support institutions in their efforts to propose innovations for the review of their curriculum, as is already being done by the University of Ibadan. Then, by more qualified expert teams, proposals from various institutions should be sorted and synthesized in order to examine the current BMAS documents and/or produce new ones as necessary.
“The difference here is the bottom-up approach, unlike the top-bottom or take-it-or-leave-it model of the CCMAS.”
