By Francis Ekongang Nzante
The University of Dschang's increasing presence in the North West and South West Regions through its affiliation of Private Higher Institutions of Learning is paying off as the number of Institutions that now offer Graduate and Post Graduate Programmes are slowly but surely increasing thanks to Memoranda of Understanding and Specific Partnership Agreements signed with State Universities.
Examples abound and some of them include Institutions like the National Polytechnic University Institute Bamenda, Florence Nightingale Higher Institute of Health and Biomedical Sciences, and more recently the Central University Institute Bamenda known by the acronym CUIBA. These Universities are either affiliated to The Universities of Bamenda, Buea or Dschang.
This reporter took out time to visit the Defense of some level 300 students of CUIBA which took place recently within the confines of the Institution under the watchful eyes of a mixed Supervisory team. These students thanks to an MOU with the University of Dschang will be graduating in a couple of weeks.
This reporter caught up with one of the students , Elvis Yuh. Just coming out from his defense the student said that this was a very special day for all the degree students of the establishment. His presentation during the Defense was centered around “Advertising, an effective promotional tool to increase the sales of a new product…” Elvis Yuh praised their Course Instructors for sufficient drilling which helped them to sail through the Defense Hitch Free albeit the challenging circumstances and fear of doing something wrong. “The Performance of all the students have been wonderful and we can only give credit to the school and it’s teachers for guiding us Properly. We are sufficiently equipped to confront the Market Place and we can even create our own jobs to employ people in our various Communities” he said.
This student acknowledged the fact that there are many Higher Institutions of Learning offering Professional studies but hinted that the problem lay in making the right choice and going to a place where you will be appropriately trained. He intimated that their studies involved much more of practice and field work adding that he chose Marketing because there was a lack of Marketers in the field. “Most people who do Marketing end up as Sales persons but there is a great difference between a Marketer and a Sales Person. I noticed that many Enterprises were not having good marketing strategists.”
Dr Ankia Emmanuel, Director of Academic Affairs at CUIBA who was part of the Supervisory team said the exercise taking place was concerned with the Defense of Degree students doing Business studies. “Everything went on well and the Students presented their projects in the various areas in which they did their research and we've really had a positive appraisal on all that was done. We are really proud of what has taken place here today and we hope that as these students go on they will make our institution proud. Four students carried out their work in the domain of Marketing and three of them worked in the domain of Human Resource Management. Some of them had their HND with us while others came in from other Institutions.” Dr Ankia was very confident that given the collaboration with the University of Dschang, which he described as the best University in the Central African Sub-Region, the students were going to succeed.
Meantime this reporter also caught up with Miss Fuoh Fedora Bi, Head of Department HOD of Management who said “today we had defense not only for the end of term Projects but also for their Business Plans. Our Programme is a B-Tech. It’s a professional Programme so we incorporated a Business Plan to it. That’s why they were supposed to present a Business Plan that is sellable. At the end, this Business Plan must be feasible in such a way that they can actually establish a business. The aim of it was not just that they graduate with a B-Tech but that they are also able to be self employed and to employ others. Narrowing down on their challenges she said “Most of them have a good mastery of their work but lack self confidence. You find out that some of them had Business Plans of 15 to 30 millions FCFA but were shifting away from being owners of the business. They felt that they were not strong enough to own such a business.” The HOD said that when you looked at the content of their projects, you could not believe that it was only level 300 students who had conceived them.
She recalled that the students studied under very challenging circumstances given the prevailing security and health challenges. Sometimes they had to organise classes on Sunday since their Programmes are from the University of Dschang. The University of Dschang follows it’s Progammes in a non crisis context and given that students in Bamenda were and still are in a crisis hit region, this compounded the challenges of the students as well as those of the affiliated institutions.
Gwenchu Honorine Vishiago, one of the students with one of the best scores from the Department of Management said one of the things she appreciated at CUIBA was their flexibility. The focus of her presentation was “The effects of Non delinquency on Micro Finance Institutions” “Thanks to the theoretical knowledge gained from the institution and internships which we took part in, everything went well.”
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Wawww kudos!! To central University Institute
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