General studies: The intellectual meeting point for all disciplines in tertiary institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

All over the world universities have the general studies
programme otherwise called GSP. It gets students familiar with
other subjects or fields of study. The general studies programme
was designed consciously to bring about desirable changes which
will better prepare young Nigerian undergraduates to the tasks of
prosecuting and providing solutions to the problems of climate
change, insecurity, refugees, corruption, gender politics,
terrorism etc. Its main objective is to avoid a single track
educational system where a student is taught only the course he
or she was admitted to study which was obtainable before the
1960s. It was meant to provide intellectual meeting point for all
disciplines and inculcate in the students a broad based education
which widens the students’ intellectual horizons. The importance
of general studies is to make scholars versatile in virtually every
aspect of the social life and civility rather than being champions
of their particular field of study and very deficient in other fields
of learning. The study fosters intelligibility, effective
communication in English language and keeps students with
fundamentals of the Humanities, Natural and Social sciences
thereby empower them to proffer solution to basic social
problems at graduation. Hence, the major thesis of this article is
that with the General studies programme, the tertiary institutions
are designed to produce professionals who are knowledgeable,
competent and skilled to face the challenges in our country. This is to say that without it, there would be no balanced network
system in the training of individuals. Critical analysis and
expository methods will be adopted as research methodology in
the work.