Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The National Universities Commission (NUC) disclosed that it has “unbundled” the course of study, Mass Communication, into seven separate degree programmes to meet growing demands.
The commission’s Executive Secretary, Mr Abubakar Rasheed, who disclosed this in Abuja, said Mass Communication has been structured into Media Studies, Public Relation Studies, Cinematography, among others.
The seven new Programmes/Departments, will still be under the Faculty of Mass Communication and are: Journalism & Media Studies; Public Relations; Advertising; Broadcasting; Film & Multi-Media Studies; Development Communication Studies; and Information & Media Studies.
The commission also said that degree programmes in Agriculture, Architecture and Creative Art have also been split into different ones, with the changes expected to take effect this year in all universities in the country.
He said the present Agriculture degree programme in the universities is now broken into Forestry, Soil Science, Plant Science and others.
The Executive Secretary also dismissed the rumour that the Federal Government has abolished catchment area as part of criteria for admission into Nigerian universities, said peddlers of such information probably misinterpreted the government decision to ensure more national spread of students in all federal universities.
He also tackled the reports that said they were over 100 fake professors in Nigerian universities, saying that although the commission was aware there were fake professors in the system but said they were yet to get the real figure.
Speaking further, the NUC boss revealed that there are about 61,000 lecturers teaching in Nigerian universities while only about 10,000 of them are professors.
Mr Rasheed said institutions like polytechnics, colleges of education, inter-university centre as well as research institutes cannot produce professors as only the University’s Senate has the power to promote academic staff to the professorial position.
He also expressed worry over the upsurge of illegal degree-awarding institutions, saying the Commission is compiling a comprehensive list of such illegal universities and working with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to ensure that graduates of such institutions and other fake universities from nearby countries are not mobilised for the one-year mandatory service.
