The executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof
Julius Okojie has suspended part-time programmes in Nigerian
universities.
He disclosed this in Abuja yesterday while announcing the accreditation of National Open University of Nigeria,NOUN.
According to Okojie, the step was aimed at rationalising the
activities as well as bringing them in line with best practices and to
ensure standards.
The reasons for suspending the part-time programmes he said included
illegal operations by some of the institutions and over-bloated
population in the admission process among others.
He stated that when the ban was lifted, admission into part-time
programme would not exceed 20 per cent intake, and added that lectures
for all part-time programmes would be restricted to university campuses
only.
He said, “for now all part-time programmes are suspended, we are
going to streamline them. In the effect, we should not have more than 20
per cent of the total students’ population on part-time programmes.
“All part-time programmes must be located on campus, we don’t want satellite campuses again”.
He emphasised that regulation is the major part of the commission’s
activities and NUC will not hesitate to wield the big stick on any
defaulting institution.
Meanwhile, NUC has announced the accreditation of 30 out of the 31
programmes run by the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
Announcing the result of the accreditation visit which was conducted
in March this year, Prof Okojie said only Nursing Science was denied
accreditation for using a 10 years old curriculum.
26 programmes representing 83.9% was given Interim accreditation
while 4 courses representing 12.9% of the programme was given full
accreditation.