Summary
The paper aims at examining the inability of NOUN to graduate degree students despite 7 years of operation. It examined this by viewing the quality, quantity, experience and continuous development of the academic staff. A 25% sample of the academic staff was taken across the schools and using the Spearman-Rho correlation, it is established that the acute shortage of academic staff hampers performance. It is also established that only 40% of the staff have doctoral degrees and 74% are in the lower academic ranks with few older academicians to mentor them. Finally, many of the staff has little or no experience in tertiary
IntroductionAn open university is a university that takes care of all its prospective candidates irrespective of their academic background (Anderson, Benjamin and Fuss, 1998). The door of the university is open to all. All applicants are admitted at will and are allowed to study according to their speed. This implies that a student may choose to study longer than the minimum number of years required to graduate for a particular course. Open universities has various programmes designed to take care of various interest groups of people despite their deficiencies. It is a university that do not shut the admission door on any applicant. Candidates who have deficiencies are usually admitted on compassionate grounds such as age and experience.Presently, all over the world, Open and Distance Education (ODE) is gaining momentum and is responding to the challenge of the exponential rise in the population of those who have been deprived of the right to education. This mode of study has been legitimately accepted as a mode of education for over 150 years (Guri-Rosenblit, 1999; Holmberg, 2001). As a worldwide phenomenon, ODE has also become an acceptable mode of education in AfricaOpen Praxis Volume 4, Issue 1, March 2010Page 1 and particularly in Nigeria (Adekanmbi, 2004). However, the greatest challenge confronting ODE in Africa generally and Nigeria in particular is the availability of quality academic staff versed in the operations of the ODE.
National Open University of Nigeria: A Brief OverviewAs far back as 1977, the idea of an open university has already reflected in the National Policy on Education as it states that: "maximum efforts will be made to enable those who can benefit from higher education to be given access to it. Such access may be through universities or correspondence courses, or open universities, or part-time and work study programme" (National Policy on Education, 1977). It was this policy statement that paved the way for the National Open University (NOU), the forerunner of the NOUN.After a prolonged debate in the National Assembly, an act establishing the Open University of Nigeria was passed. The NOU was formally established on 22 nd July, 1983 but before it could take off, the act was suspended via a budgetary pronouncement made by General Buhari on April 25, 1984, after the military junta took over (Blueprint, 2002). However, in 2002 another democratically elected gover...