ASUU rejects NUC designed curriculum, warns against erosion of varsities’ autonomy

ASUU slams new curriculum by NUC, cautions against erosion of varsities’ autonomy

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has rejected the Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards developed by the National Universities Commission (NUC).

In a statement issued on Friday by its President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, the union described the curriculum as a threat to the standard of higher education, and erosion of the authority of the university senate in the country.

ASUU lamented that the Nigerian university system was being forced to adopt the NUC’s prepackaged 70 percent content, while university senates were only given 30 percent to work with.

The statement read: “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”.

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“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.”

“NUC should encourage universities, as currently being done by the University of Ibadan, to propose innovations for the review of their programmes. Proposals from across universities should then be sieved and synthesised by more competent expert teams to review the existing BMAS documents and/or create new ones as appropriate.

“The difference here is the bottom-up approach, unlike the top-bottom or take-it-or-leave-it model of the CCMAS.”

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