While many will think that the compulsory sales of textbooks in Universities and Polytechnics has gone extinct, recent surveys suggest its still very pronounced. I had an argument with someone on the rot in our Universities and Polytechnics, this argument bothered on the fact that university and polytechnic lecturers still force students to buy their textbooks, a requirements that is compulsory should such student desire to pass the course. Passing a course is thus not entirely by merit. In some instances, these lecturers use these textbooks as a continuous assessment, awarding up to 40% of the course marks to textbooks.

To have confirm my belief, I decided to carry out a survey on Federal Polytechnic Unwana. This school is notorious in shoving their textbooks down the student’s throat. Students are threatened with failure if they fail to buy the course textbooks.
To put a figure on this issue, I sent out questionnaires, however, I observed most students do not want to speak up for fear of lecturers being strict on them. I am therefore calling on the administration to put a stop on this imposition of textbooks as a prerequisite to pass a course.
A total number of 147 students responded to this survey. Among the responders, 63.9% are male, 23.8% female, and 12.3% preferred not to state their gender.

The aim of this thread is to get the Rector of Federal Polytechnic Unwana and other Polytechnic lecturers, University lecturers to stop the compulsory imposition of textbooks on students.


The moderators should please move this to the front page
Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs

75.8% of Students in the 144 respondents confirmed that they buy textbooks for all their courses. On whether the sale of textbooks is a prerequisite to pass a course, 62.5% of the responders agreed it is a prerequisite to pass a course.

This percentage is enough to call out whoever the Rector of the polytechnic is. Only 15.3% of the responders said it is not compulsory to buy a textbook in other to pass a course.

This question was tricky, but helped to drive the aim of this research. The students were asked if it was possible for a lecturer to fail them in a course should they fail to buy his/her textbook. 55.2% of the students said it is possible that failure to buy a textbook could lead to a student failing the course.

Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs, mynd44 please move to frontpage. I spent time and money to conduct this research, to get students to respond. At first, they were afraid, but when I told them that responses are anonymous, the few of them began to respond to the survey. Please move to front page.

In a semester, about 61.6% of responders said they buy more than 7 textbooks. The average cost of a textbook hovered between N2000 - N4000 for each textbook. If most students buy on average 7 textbooks in a semester, it means that students spend (if we average the price of a textbook to be N3000) about N21,000 on textbooks.

Of course, purchase of textbooks is very important, however, with increasing digital textbooks and information online, imposing this on students with the current economic situation in the country is very bad.

I did this survey to contribute to cleaning and getting our systems working. If the mods can push this to the front page, I am confident that the administration/management will sit up to do things right.


Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs, mynd44

About 49.3% of responders said that the school management is aware of this compulsory sale and imposition of textbooks on students.

Only 19% do not agree that the management if aware of this menace in the system

Nigeria's educational system is cursed. Funnily enough, the textbooks they force innocengstudents to buy are mediocre and poorly written books.
Smh

When asked if there has ever been a course they didn't buy textbooks for, only 38% said they have been faithful in buying textbooks for every course.
56.6% has defaulted in buying a textbook in a course.

When asked if they failed the course as a result of not buying the textbook, half of the responders said that they failed the course. This represents 50.5% of the responders.

Heartlessbanker:
Nigeria's educational system is cursed. Funnily enough, the textbooks they force innocengstudents to buy are mediocre and poorly written books.
Smh

Exactly. One student told that they were forced to buy same textbook twice because the lecturer used same textbook to teach them in second and final year. Imagine being forced to buy same textbook twice. Isn't it wickedness?

76.8% of the responders think that the school management should stop the compulsory sale of textbooks.

I did this survey to have evidence to make this claim, I believe we can help the students to Soro Soke on this issue that they are experiencing.

Moderators, Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs, mynd44, let us help this students by pushing this to the front page.

Finally, 88.1% of the responders said they struggle to buy this textbook.

The economy is hard, students don't need to be forced to buy textbooks after struggling to pay tuition fees.

I strongly believe this should be pushed to the front page, except the moderators think otherwise.


Cc. Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs, mynd44.

A thread like this should be given a wider coverage. We need institutional revitalization and the only way to achieve this is push those hidden rots in our system to the front page.

Unfortunately, no one wants to talk about this. It's easier when we blame FG for all things but shy away when we can help the system to change.

Cc @lailaisticlacla
@mod Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs

Please, this thread needs attention, this matter is peculiar to most higher institutions in Nigeria

@ Seun, lailaisticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs

I am imploring the Mods to move at least 2 topics from the Education Thread to FP daily.

i really don't see why the mods; Seun, lailaisticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs, would have any interest on putting this to front page. Not that they dont want to, but the nigerians you are trying to educate self are not interested in such educative content. we only want to hear about davido and chioma, money rituals, political induced bigotry, and other negative news that exist on the soils of naija.. Nairaland is doing what other mainstream media(since na so so news they enter front page) do and that is, to sell negativity

@ Seun, lailaisticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, olawalebabs

I still don't know why we haven't moved to front page.

This is worth front page. If this means ranting to the mods, I will keep ranting until this thread is moved to front page.

Seun, lalasticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, dominique it so surprisingly you guys don't see this as front page worthy simply because it is not laycon and Erica

mrphysics well-done. This work is good however it needs some improvement. Your population of study is missing rather you went straight to your sample. Secondly you didn't state which department (s) you studied. It possible that you focused on one department. Thirdly, you didn't state your sampling technique ( probability or non probability sampling).
These should have been considered before concluding your findings.

edoairways:
mrphysics well-done. This work is good however it needs some improvement. Your population of study is missing rather you went straight to your sample. Secondly you didn't state which department (s) you studied. It possible that you focused on one department. Thirdly, you didn't state your sampling technique ( probability or non probability sampling).
These should have been considered before concluding your findings.

I understand your point bro. This is not a full research as I am not on ground to conduct such research. I also do not want to see the distribution by departments (I may consider it for the next school).

Like I stated somewhere above, the students were not willing to speak up, any information relating to who they are will chase them away. I had to make alot of changes and got people to spread it in their groups. I stated that its very anonymous. As you can see from the gender chart, a good number of them preferred not to say their gender.

The research gave us a highlevel overview into the state of things in the school. For instance, someone sent me a message and told me that she bought same textbook twice for different courses she did in her ND2 and HND 1 simply because it was same lecturer that teach the two courses. You can imagine.

Seun, lalasticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, dominique we need to Soro Soke this thread. The students are really suffering. This has been happening for a long time. No one wants to talk about it especially in this school. The lecturers are notorious for this.

Not moving this thread to front page is actually an injustice to this students next semester. Aside struggling to pay tuition fees, these students struggle to buy mandatory textbooks. Some of them prioritize this textbook over their school fees because without this text, you will not pass a course.

mrphysics:


I understand your point bro. This is not a full research as I am not on ground to conduct such research. I also do not want to see the distribution by departments (I may consider it for the next school).

Like I stated somewhere above, the students were not willing to speak up, any information relating to who they are will chase them away. I had to make alot of changes and got people to spread it in their groups. I stated that its very anonymous. As you can see from the gender chart, a good number of them preferred not to say their gender.

The research gave us a highlevel overview into the state of things in the school. For instance, someone sent me a message and told me that she bought same textbook twice for different courses she did in her ND2 and HND 1 simply because it was same lecturer who teach the two courses. You can imagine.

Na wa oh

Unfortunately, this is not given a wider audience.

Seun, lalasticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, dominique

Your attention is need on this thread please.

mrphysics:
Seun, lalasticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, dominique

Your attention is need on this thread please.

don't sweat it. This kind of thread will never smell frontpage.

Heartlessbanker:
don't sweat it. This kind of thread will never smell frontpage.

Lol, it maybe difficult to get to front page, but I have seen the moderators move informative threads to frontpage.

I am however shocked on why the delay. I made the research myself, I didn't copy from anywhere, and the link to the raw data exist. Lol. Maybe, just maybe Myd44, Seun, lalasticlacla, Fynestboi, Richiez, dominique, etc will decide to save the students from paying additional fee for textbooks in this recession.

Soro Soke to help Nigerian students

On the other hand, why would they want to push a topic to the front page a thread that has the moderators' names spread over it?

Over a week since it was created and the number of views is still under 300.

I dunno the strength of the moderating staff of Nairaland, but the average number of topics created on NL per day is way over a thousand. You can call the mods all you want, but they'll only attend to issues they feel is worth their time. Topics that usually get to the front page are those that have a lot of engagement. Yours is still struggling with the first page, and half the comments there belong to the creator of the page.

Check it out. People who are the only ones commenting on their own thread usually want to sell a product that not much people are buying.

Nairaland operates on a business model. They push to the front page what people are interested in and so far, yours haven't shown much potential in that regard.

That said, don't sweat it. I saw a thread that hit front page five years after it was created. If it's meant to, it will get there. If it ain't, kindly move on.

No hard feelings whatsoever. I have nothing against the stuff you're talking about and I'm all for a better educational system.

Just adding my two cents, is all.