Vice Chancellor of the University of Cross River State, UNICROSS, Professor Augustine Angba, has justified why the university has decided that mop-up examinations should be administered to students from 2014/2015 to 2019/2020 academic sessions who were affected by the university’s policy of “no fees, no exams”.
He justified the university’s latest decision today, when he featured as a guest of “The Public View”, the news and current affairs programme on HIT 95.9 FM Calabar.
Angba explained that this latest decision is meant to minimize problems that are often associated with preparation of transcripts for students who do not pay school fees at the required time. He said that some students have the habit of not paying school fees as soon as they get into the second years and more advanced years of their academic programmes.
According to him, “this is the reason why getting transcripts is sometimes difficult because we can’t isolate results and prepare. That means ‘pay as you go’ is not going on. Rather, as you pay, they bring out your scripts and mark. It has caused serious distortion in result preparation.”
He further stated that although the policy of “no fees, no exams” currently exists in the university, it is difficult to successfully prevent all indebted students from writing exams. Consequently, he said: “Many times when they don’t pay their fees and they write the exams, they move to the next class. They are believing that lecturers would just mark the scripts and keep the results. And then they graduate. When they need the results, they would come few days to the time and pay the fees. Sometimes they may not even go through proper clearance processes. When you are an old student and you come to pay fees, we would need record backtracking. That makes it a bit difficult. When you come from Lagos, Port Harcourt or anywhere and say ‘after all I have paid my fees, I need my results’, it is so challenging and very difficult. You see much more frustration on the graduate’s face.”
In addition, the Vice Chancellor explained that record backtracking imposes additional burden on staff of the university. “If you allow us mark the scripts and we extract only for those who have paid fees, then the staff would be working doubly. They would be doing the same job again and again because if we assume that one hundred students didn’t pay fees in a class of two hundred students, fifty students would come this year to pay. Another thirty may come next year to pay. They won’t come all at the same time. The funny drama is that any time anyone comes to pay fees, the next thing is ‘I want my results’. So it is difficult all round. The consequences are heavier than just paying fees.”
He therefore submitted that mop-up examinations will overcome such challenges as well as generate funds from school fee payment for payment of salaries and maintenance of the university. “If students take advantage of the mop-up and stop owing fees in future, the problem of delayed clearance, NYSC mobilization, issuance of transcript and certificate will be a thing of the past.”
The mop up exams will take place from Monday, September 13 2021 to Friday, September 17, 2021. According to the university’s decision, students who owed school fees but wish to take advantage of this opportunity would be accepted only on payment of the complete fees. Affected students who fail to take advantage of this opportunity may have to apply to the VC’s office for deferment of their studentship.
UNICROSS
What then happen to those who names came out for nysc but didn’t go