My target is to take NOUN enrolment to 500,000... The Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Professor Vincent Ado Tenebe, in this interview with the Northern Bureau Chief, HASSAN IBRAHIM, on the activities of the institution, student’s enrollment and other sundry issues. Excerpts What is NOUN’s students’ enrollment? When I took over as vice-chancellor in 2010, students’ population of the National Open University of Nigeria had dropped from 32,000 to 16,000; but when I took over, students’ population rose from 16,000 to 53,000 just in one semester. As I speak to you now, I can’t just tell you the total number of students admitted, because we admit everyday, as the only university in Nigeria that matriculates twice a year. Every semester, we have student’s registration. So, the best time to ask me about students’ registration is just before the examination of a semester. We are the only university that democratises education. We allow you to register this semester and next semester you might disappear, only to appear in another semester and we will not question you, because we have given you that liberty. My last assessment, some days ago, of the total students admitted in Open University stood at 308,000. We have just started semester registration. Already, 65,000 students have been registered. Like I told you, the number of students will increase because Nigerians will wait until when they know that exam is coming and they will be looking for who to beg to allow them register – when they have all the liberty to do it now without begging. So, we can say we have moved the Open University to 308,000 students, but the number of active students changes from semester to semester. We are still not happy because I set a target for myself that before I leave office – which will be 2015, God willing – I want to see the population of the university to hit 500,000. But the target set for this university is to ensure that at least we have 1.5 million students in our enrolment, and we can manage that. That is the only way we can reach out to Nigerians, whose population is already 170 million. NOUN’s activities are mostly online. What efforts are you making to checkmate cyber fraud? Some of our activities are online, like admission, registration and even accessing some of our materials. But because we know the kind of environment we are, being in Africa where we have some technological challenges, we also utilise other technologies such as print media or even sometimes radio and television and recorded programmes, to reach out to our students. Sometimes, we do have challenges in network. When we consider organisations that base their operations on online – like the banks, security, even the mass media – sometimes you want to carry out operation, you get network failure. That is one aspect of technology we have to cope with. I want you to know that this network failure is not only peculiar to Nigeria; it also happens to advanced countries. We do experience that sometime and we have to cope with it. As regards cyber fraud, we have not experienced that yet because we have strategies to deal with it; and those strategies I will not disclose because that is in the interest of safeguarding the university. The same applies to cyber crash. What is the position on the credibility and acceptability of NOUN graduates for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC)? Graduates of Open University who are of NYSC age have no reason why they should be excluded from NYSC, having gone through the same curriculum with their other counterparts. There is no reason. The only reason why this is happening is because when the NYSC started in 1973, the Open University was not there but other conventional universities were there. It is left for you, me and my colleagues to push the Nigerian people to say ‘don’t deprive the youths who are of NYSC age from going on NYSC’ while those who are above the age should get exemption. Thank God we have used the system to the extent that NYSC is issuing exemption to all our graduates. But that is not good enough. I foresee in the very near future when you have moved the people where the NYSC would allow the youth who are below the age of 30 and have gone through a programme of four to five years to go for national service. As for our degrees or certificates, there is an English adage that says that the taste of the pudding is in the eating. Go and look at our graduates and see what they can deliver. Go and compare our graduates with their counterparts (in conventional universities) and give them job to accomplish and you know who to go for. We are not just marketing our graduates; just you taste and see. Very soon, in the next few years, you will get report from the public telling you that Open University is the best place to hire employees. So, acceptability is not a question at all. How can you access the education policy of the present administration? As far as I am concerned, as a participant in the educational sector of Nigeria, I can tell you that we are doing our best to ensure that we keep pace with other parts of the world. I can tell you I am not part of that group that keep telling people all over the world that the educational standard of Nigeria has fallen. Educational standard has fallen all over the world, not only in Nigeria. Before you can convince me that educational standard has fallen, you can bring Nigerian students or graduates with their counterparts all over the world and give them a test and see whether they will perform below average. I always ask, how many Nigerians have you seen who graduated from Nigerian university and went abroad for postgraduate studies have been withdrawn because of poor performance? The story we hear is that they always beat their counterparts abroad because we learn through the hard way; and when they go where technology is making things so different, they just find it as a walkover. So, please you are the mouth piece of the people. Do not give negative story to the world that will portray us in bad light. There are more good things happening in this country than bad. We know negative news sells, but why don’t you report more of the good news than the bad ones? Our educational system is not bad; it is good. I don’t believe that we are not doing well. What is the way out? Finally, the way out, somebody asked why are we still producing graduates when there are no jobs? Education and going to school the primary aim is not for you to get a job. Being educated is to develop your mind. It is to expose you, so that you can become an individual that can find your way out. You are to be equipped; and once you are equipped and you graduate, then you find your way out. All over the world, there is no country that does not have unemployment issue. Unemployment will always be there. My advice is for the government to encourage open and distance learning. Through the open and distance learning, you produce an individual that is creative; who can study on his own; an individual that is self- made; an individual with minimal supervision. Once that person graduates, he is not going into the streets looking for an employer. He is going to become an employer himself. That is why in the Open University, one of our recent developments is to create an advancement office, through which we are going to encourage entrepreneurship. The Open University has been able to acquire a micro finance bank, to ensure that all the students we are to enroll into Open University, henceforth, who are not working already, because we have a lot of them who are working, but now the population of students who are not working is also increasing. We are going to use our micro finance banking, our entrepreneur centre, to teach them how to use products that can allow our finance bank to empower them; and in so doing, we create jobs for them. While they are working, they also study, because our motto says, ‘Work and learn. Once that individual does that business for the period of five years and paying back the loan given to him or her for the business, by the time the individual graduates, he is not going for a job of N50,000 a month, because he would have become an employer. Source: tribune.ng/education/item/13296-my-target-is-to-take-noun-enrolment-to-500-000/13296-my-target-is-to-take-noun-enrolment-to-500-000 Goddey Okiemute LLB. 07036610933
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 04:52:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015