It is not uncommon for one to see the National Open University of Nigeria NOUN being tagged a scam, a fraudulent institution, a useless school and so on. I would not have really believed all these claims if I did not eventually get to have an encounter with the institution.


The National Open University of Nigeria offers professionals and other people who are busy and unable to attend a conventional university the opportunity to study online and then write a paper based examination at a designated time. So, I enrolled for a Post Graduate Diploma in Education program at the institution based on the fact that I am an educator with a very tight schedule and I feel such qualification will make me a better educator while I will also have the chance to continue work and study at the same time.


The first bitter experience I encountered was at the registration point at the Victoria Island school where I came in contact with very rude and nasty staff that would not even attend to you few minutes to their closing time even if you plead that you had to rush from work from a far location to get something stamped. All your pleas will fall on deaf ears.


Away from the registration hassle, the online continuous assessments tagged TMAs is a great shame to an institution that is a representative of Nigeria as a nation. The questions are filled with too many typographical errors, meaningless sentences and senseless lifting from the study materials as well as numerous wrong answers. It is such a shame to see that the questions were never cross-checked for errors and there is no monitoring team to oversee these things. The questions are set as though a textbook was handed over to a Primary 3 child to extract sentences from whether meaningful or senseless. Some of the study materials are even so outdated and have not been reviewed for years. The "Computers in Society" textbook for example, still caries instructions from Windows XP Operating system


The conduct of examinations and organisation at the Centers particularly the Mushin center is an eyesore. Invigilators do not conduct themselves properly and do not give the allotted time for the exams. A section of the students can even start same exams like 20 minutes before others due to poor organisation and distribution of scripts and everyone will still have to submit at the same time. On one occasion, an invigilator was even bold enough to tell me that she got home late due to traffic the previous day and that is why 35 minutes was cut off from the stipulated time for a particular paper so we can finish on time and she can go home. Can you imagine!


The final straw that broke the camel's back was the recently released 1st semester examinations results. It is audible to the deaf and visible to the blind that the scripts were not thoroughly marked probably due to the fact that time was fleeting and second semester had started. Thus, random scores were distributed to students. I had 3 straight F's in courses that were well read and covered, so easy and well answered with utmost degree of precision and with no single cancellation when being answered. These are courses in which I did not even have less than 27/30 in the tests. How come the courses turn out as straight F's? Does the examiner wish to tell me that I could not get 23/70 in the exams I already had a 27/30 to even score a 50 C? This is same for a lot of people. Some of the courses that even turned out as C's were wrongly graded. While some markers played safe by distributing C's, others distributed F's. I think they bit more than they could chew and had thousands of scripts to mark as NOUN does not even seem to have a maximum stipulated number for students to get in. It is all about the money and nothing else.The first thing I feel like doing if I ever get to see whoever marked my script and gave me a C is to land a hot slap on the person's face. How can one put so much effort and have many sleepless nights to prepare for exams and the results turn out this way? I had to check my page severally to ensure I was not checking another person's result. NOUN thinks everyone that comes to register for courses in the institution is a riff-raff that would not prepare very well for exams and will swallow whatever is thrown at them as results.


It is obvious that NOUN has been struck by an aggressive fund generation practice and instruction such that you can barely pass through the school without overpaying for tuition and course registration due to a deliberate attempt to always make students come back by failing to get them registered for some courses in some cases, dishing outright failures for courses that were well done and a lot of other unmentionable scandalous practices. In our own case, dishing out failures is a way of milking about 4,500 naira re-registration fees from each candidate for a course. If you fail 3, that gives about 13, 500 naira extra pay. Imagine multiplying that by thousands of students with similar issues. It costs 10,000 naira to get your scripts remarked and this usually takes so much time to process. Thus, most people just move on, re- register for failed courses to save time rather than wait for the long process and spend more. Either way, NOUN makes money. This is such a big shame!


If NOUN wants to milk people dry and make extra money, why not increase project fees to say 50,000 naira or something else rather than subject people to the psychological trauma of registering for courses that were initially well done. How will it feel being served again, a paper for a course you wrote for an A and never failed but was made to believe you did? How can NOUN stoop so low and degenerate to this stage such that scripts were never marked but random scores were given? How can a whole National Open University of Nigeria be this terrible? How can an institution generate so much money from time to time and cannot put in adequate resources and Manpower to pilot her affairs?


The second semester exams has just begun and I and my colleagues are skeptical about our efforts this time around. We hope that it will not be in vain like it was last semester. This madness that is going on at the National Open University of Nigeria needs to be checked by whoever needs to. This is a case of being oppressed with no one to fight for one as it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to get attended to whenever anything goes wrong at the National Open University of Nigeria. However, we still trust our dear Nairaland to bring to the fore, these sort of heartlessness and evil being perpetrated by the National Open University of Nigeria.

Hmmm

NOUN as far as I am concerned is adult education, the standard there is incomparable with what is obtainable in the conventional university. Infact I dont even rate NOUN as a university rather what it is "noun".

jesmond3945:
NOUN as far as I am concerned is adult education, the standard there is incomparable with what is obtainable in the conventional university. Infact I dont even rate NOUN as a university rather what it is "noun".

Lol. Too bad

@lalasticlala, kindly move to the front page. Thank you.

This is why black nations never progress.

Noun project topics and materials free download www.researchs.com.ng .

jesmond3945:
NOUN as far as I am concerned is adult education, the standard there is incomparable with what is obtainable in the conventional university. Infact I dont even rate NOUN as a university rather what it is "noun".

The essence of having NOUN is to study from home at your convenient and then take exams. NOUN is not necessary an adult school as many think because university education has no age limit except for few schools like Nigeria that set their between 16-18 years to gain admission. Instead of paying thousands of dollars to obtain online education you can opt in for this. NOUN has it's flaws but it has common to stay