As part of the repositioning and revitalisation of university education in Nigeria, five years ago, the National Universities Commission (NUC), had announced the unbundling of Mass Communication as a degree programme into several separate degree programmes, thereby, making it a full Faculty.
According to the then Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Professor Abubakar Rasheed who announced the development at a Press briefing in December 2019, the resolve was among the major reforms by the Commission aimed at meeting the demands in university education in Nigeria in line with global development and best practices.
The new programmes and departments under the Faculty/ School/College of Communication and Media Studies include, but are not limited to the following:
• Journalism and Media Studies
• Public Relations
• Advertising
• Broadcasting
• Film and Multi-media studies
• Development of Communication studies
• Information and media studies.
The unbundling was a result of the recommendation by stakeholders and professionals at the national conference that finalised the draft on review of the Mass Communication curriculum facilitated by Bayero University Kano (BUK), held in February 2018 with the support of the McArthur Foundation had championed the unbundling of the programme and had earlier been given approval by NUC to establish Faculty of Communication.
It was observed that Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication was overloaded and current global developments have shown that running a single degree programme that covers all the different aspects of Mass Communication.
Among courses in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines, it is undeniable that Mass Communication is the most sought after by prospective students because of its definite career guarantee From some professional obscurity, mass communication has evolved into a competitive course in the last forty years, especially in Nigeria, requiring that the Mass Communication must continue to receive public and regulatory attention to enhance its quality and uniformity in the way it is taught in our universities and polytechnics.
The intention and decision to unbundle Mass Communication in Universities and Polytechnics may be genuine. However, there are palpable concerns that the nation may not be able to meet the requirement of satisfying the initiative if it is to deepen specialization in the discipline of mass communication.
As of today, there are no fewer than 140 universities and polytechnics offering mass communication in Nigeria, the implication of which is that there would not be less than that number of faculties, with about 1000 departments covering all the unbundled courses.
Remarkably, this reality raises an essential question: What number of lecturers would be adequate to man each department in a faculty? What would be the overall size of the faculty of Communication in each university? Does Nigeria have the manpower to man the faculties given the range and diversity of courses that are expected to be taught?
Another concern that is being raised in unbundling Mass Communication is: at what stage can students specialize in the discipline? Those in this school of thought believe that it is needless for students to specialize at the foundation degree level, as the discipline can be run like Medicine or Law where the first degrees are general but specialization can come at higher levels. For instance, in Medicine, every student earns MBBS while in Law, it is LL.B.
While there may be no going back on the unbundling initiative now, what is to be noted is that Mass Communication discipline is a multi-talent, complementary and adaptive discipline that students and professionals should have sufficient grounding at the basic undergraduate level to make them function competently, effectively, efficiently and be mobile in the industry because practical professional needs demand that a mass communication graduate is versatile in all aspects of the discipline.
It is mostly only at the executive, consultancy, research or academic levels where specialization or concentration and further depth are required that extensive compartmentalization or departmentalization becomes needful.
These realities are what faculties and universities offering mass communication must be sensitive to so that they would not be running from pillar to post in trying to meet the requirements for accreditation of their courses in justifying their readiness or competence in running mass communication programmes.
For now, not many of the faculties have the required personnel or infrastructure to run an elaborate mass communication programme, a situation that calls for moderation or a serious rethink in implementing or pursuing the unbundling initiative.