LASU defended its decision on multiple choice only questions.

All that is required of part-time students at the Lagos State University, LASU, is to answer a set of 70 multiple choice questions every semester to be awarded a Bachelors degree, PREMIUM TIMES has learnt.

In what one university professor described as a “dangerous development” in the already poor standard of university education in the country, LASU earlier this year directed all lecturers at its part-time campuses scattered across Lagos to henceforth set only multiple choice questions for all examinations.

Copies of some questions seen by this newspaper suggest that the questions were haphazardly put together with irregular numbering, ridden with grammatical and sometimes factual errors. It is devoid of the standardised quality associated with public multiple-choice examinations.

There seems to be no effort made by the university to control and manage the standard. Invigilation during the examination was lax, if any at all, we learnt. Examination halls were so crowded that some students did their examination standing in many of the campuses.

Although results were released in record time, there were several cases of missing results.
One student at the Anthony campus described the quality of the printing papers the questions were printed on as similar to what one sees during secondary school mock examinations.

The examinations were so substandard that some enterprising students kicked against the development to the point of openly protesting against it to lecturers, PREMIUM TIMES was told.

A former student leader of the programme, Julius Adeoye, highlighted other problems with the examination:

“The literature department, for instance, write exams based on the books they’ve read. We have different lectures with different books recommended but are required to answer the exact same questions. How do you expect students at the Jibowu campus, for instance, to answer questions on a text that wasn’t recommended to them but was recommended to students at the Festac campus?

“Writing OMR will not even allow the students to grow because I can easily copy and paste but if I’m required to write theory [essay type questions] there is no way I can copy everything from another student. Students don’t even attend classes anymore they just show up for examination knowing they can easily copy the answers of other students,” he added.

Theses for sale

The LASU part-time programme is a thriving auction for the sale of results and theses, PREMIUM TIMES can reveal.

The sale of theses, we discovered, are so widespread that lecturers now brazenly ask students to pay into their bank accounts and present copies of tellers as proof of payment. Students are required to pay as much as N50,000 before their proposals are supervised or up to N150,000 to have one written for them by the lecturers themselves.

Female students are given considerable discounts if they agree to sleep with lecturers.

A student, who asked not to be named, at the Jibowu campus said he knows lecturers who merely give part-time students theses written by full-time students and ask them to be reprinted with the names of part-time students.

Another student at the Festac campus said he paid because everyone else was paying.

An image tarnishing programme

The disorderliness of the examinations and in fact the entire part time programme indicates that the university management is doing everything to rid itself of a programme with a long history of malpractices as quickly as possible.

Following report of widespread malpractices soon after the part-time programmes were relocated from the university’s main campus in Ojo into poorly equipped campuses across the state, things spiralled out of control.

The programme was over taken by a hostage mentality. The university management, lured by the high fees paid by the students, admitted more students than it could handle. Because regular lecturers couldn’t cope with the rigour of teaching regular students as well as part time students, the university management resorted to employing part-time lecturers, many of whom are secondary school teachers without any experience in teaching at the tertiary level. Worse, they were not properly monitored or mentored as one would have expected. They were left to their own devices.

Things fall apart..........visionary Achebe.

The Important ov being Earnest

Shockingly Pathetic!

This is really disappointing. LASU used to be one of best state-owned universities in the country. SMH for them.

It's so unfortunate but very glaring that LASU's part time programme has massively deteriorate the image of the citidal of learning. Kudos to Fashola for being subtle and noticing how the part time has dented the institution's glory that he eventually scraped it.

I hope sanity will be fully restored once the remaining students in the part time all graduate.

excell12go: This is really disappointing. LASU used to be one of best state-owned universities in the country. SMH for them.

My guy suprisingly, LASU is actually currently the BEST state-owned uni in the country. (Even NUC ranked her the best) forget what the media says, other schools have their own flaws too.