The Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards that were developed by the National Universities Commission 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. He said that university Senates, which are statutorily responsible for academic programme development, were left to work on only 30 percent of the content.
The statement thought that there were rising worries about the various deficiencies and egregious inadequacies of the CCMAS documents. These concerns were expressed in the belief that there were developing concerns about these issues.
The statement added that “ASUU is not uninformed that defining academic standards and assuring quality in the NUS is within the remit of the NUC.” According to the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions Act), Chapter E3 of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, “Section 10(1) of the Act 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.”
It was pointed out that the process of establishing the standard is just as significant, if not more important, than the product that is generated as “minimum standards.”
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. They emphasised 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, lacrosse, and latin american studies.
It was indicated that many university administrators, despite their dissatisfaction, were hesitating to make public comments on CCMAS, and it was stated that several university Senates did not hide their disapproval with the continued efforts by the NUC to impose CCMAS on Nigerian universities.
It was stated that the CCMAS is a nightmare model of curriculum reengineering as an aberration to the Nigerian University System. It was also mentioned that the CCMAS documents have flaws both in the process of creating them and in the substance that they include. There is no foundation for the 70% “untouchable CCMAS,” which is unable to withstand the test of being critically examined by university Senates.
It was suggested that the NUC should encourage universities, as 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 appropriate.
It was stated that the technique taken here is bottom-up, which is different from the top-down or “take-it-or-leave-it” paradigm of the CCMAS.q
