Peace, Thompson; Wordu, Hillary; Zorle Dum, Deebom (2018)

The purpose of the study was to do a comparative analysis of the National Open University of Nigeria academic programme components of Port Harcourt centre. The specific objectives were :to identify whether the curriculum of NOUN programmed meets the standard of the conventional universities, to determine if the qualifications of teachers of NOUN programmes meet the standard of the conventional universities, to examine if the quality of students (Admission standard) of NOUN programmes meet the standard of the conventional universities, to identify whether the quality of the instructional materials/ delivery of NOUN programmes meet the standard of the conventional universities and to examine if the quality of evaluation (examination) of NOUN programme meet the quality of the conventional universities. Four structure research questions were raised to guide the study. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population of the study was 1664 of the 2016/2017 teaching staff and undergraduate students in the schools while sample size for the study comprises of 416 staff and students which were determine using 25% of the total population and simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting the sample size. The instrument used was researcher's constructed structure questionnaire on a four point's likert's scale type with 5-items. The instrument was validated while the reliability of the instrument was tested using the test-retest method and analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation which give a reliability coefficient of 0.86. Mean and percentage distribution were the simple descriptive statistics used to analyze the research questions while t-test statistics were used to test the hypotheses at 5% level of significance. The results of the findings indicate that despite the immense benefits accrue to the NOUN programme; there is still need to pay more attention to the basic academic components of the programme, Port Harcourt study centre. Sequel to the above results, the study recommends that government and other state holders of the programme should work together for the efficient and effectiveness of the NOUN basic academic components of the programme, Port Harcourt study centre.