THE National Universities Commission (NUC) has announced plans to rationalise part-time degree programmes being offered in Nigerian universities to bring them in line with international best practices. Towards this end, it has officially announced the suspension of all part-time degree programmes forthwith.The Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof. Julius Okojie, who made the announcement while releasing the outcome of the recent accreditation of the programmes of the National Open University of Nigeria, (NOUN), lamented that most universities deliberately flouts the existing rules of the operation of part-time courses.The accreditation exercise, the first since NOUN commenced academic activities in 2003 was held between March 25 and 31 involved nine academic disciplines and 31 programmes, four of which obtained full accreditation status; 26 programmes or 83.9 secured interim accreditation while only one programme or 3.2 percent was denied accreditation.According to him, 'What we are finding out is that a lot of students study illegally under the part-time programme scheme, and very soon we are going to embark on the staff and students verification in Nigerian universities, for now all part-time programmes in the universities have been suspended, we are going to streamline them. No programme should have more than 20 percent of the entire student population on part time, that the ideal population that could be taught on part-time. And all part-time programmes must be located on the campuses we don't want satellite again indirectly. Please let the public know that regulation is the major part of activities and we are ready to wield the big stick for those who don't open regulationsThe programmes with full accreditation include Agric Extension and Management; Hotel and Catering Management; Cooperative Management and Entrepreneurship and Business Management. Among those with interim accreditation included Mathematics; Mathematics/Computer Science; Environmental Science and Resource Management; Communication Technology; Data Management; Computer Science; Law; French and International Relations.Others include English; Christian Theology; Islamic Studies; Criminology and Security Studies; Tourism Studies Peace and Conflict Resolution; Primary Education; Business Education; Early Childhood Education; Integrated Science; Physics; Chemistry and Biology, while Nursing was denied accreditation.With the official release of the outcomes of the accreditation exercise, NOUN could go ahead and graduate students, admitting that the commission had strained working relationship with the previous management of the institution. His words: 'Let me tell you something, the fact that we are just going for accreditation doesn't mean that the programmes are very young, no, I told you that as from 2003, it is the mode of study. Some, I'm sure in the one or two years you will some people graduating, and good quality candidates whose degrees would be as good as the ones from the conventional universities.
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