STUDENTS
Students of UG come mainly from the various senior high schools in the country. They are also made up of the sixth formers of the old educational system, graduates of polytechnics, graduates from other universities and graduates of the school itself. My talk here is mainly about the students who come from the senior high schools.Students of the senior high schools usually work real hard to have grades good enough to be admitted to the school. But after coming, they almost always slow down. Learning, which was such pleasure at the SHS, becomes irksome. Many get withdrawn from the school for poor academic performance. I think the following reasons, and others perhaps, account for this phenomenon:• In many cases students don’t study subjects they, at first intended to study. This is usually because there is such demand for their chosen fields of study that though they may qualify, they don’t get the subjects to study. Only students with the very best results, or those who are full fee paying are taken. Now the university subjects require more effort than a person may imagine before coming. Therefore if you’re not interested in the subject you’re studying, you may not apply as much effort at it as you would if you were interested. That could put you in danger.• Conditions of learning on campus are significantly different from those of the senior high schools. Most of the changes students feel are negative. For example, students don’t attend every lecture in the same room as they used to do in the SHS. They have to move from one lecture hall to another which is sometimes hundreds of metres from the previous one. And most of them don’t have cars! Overcrowding would not allow them to study in their rooms, etc. And the situation is made worse for those students who have to board vehicles one, two or even three times to and from their various houses.• There are several distractions on campus which make it real hard to focus on books. It needs a lot of self control to stay off them. Examples are computers and the internet, television (especially DTSV and now G. These are unavailable in the average Ghanaian home), amusements, etc.
LECTURERS
Lecturers at Legon are made up of people of qualifications ranging from the first degree to doctorate degree holders. There are also people with the title ‘Professor’ (and some insist on that title being mentioned before their names!). They are generally friendly to students. They are also diligent (except for a few who are obviously lazy. I encountered one, and that’s remarkable. He would often be looking at his watch during lectures. He taught very little and often closed after teaching half way through the period).
Now I said they are generally friendly. Again, there are exceptions (at least in this regard!). I’m talking about lecturers who regard it an insult for students to do well in their subjects! They don’t like students performing well in their subjects. They try to make the examinations very difficult for students to pass well. They want only a very few A’s in the students’ results. I’m really tempted to give examples, but I’ll only go this far: some lecturers of the Mathematics, Economics and Statistics departments have made a name for themselves in this regard (This does not exclude other departments). During one end-of-semester exams, one of our Maths exam papers that was set by a lecturer had to be changed because other lecturers insisted we couldn’t solve the questions. Also, a friend who did Statistics told me that he couldn’t understand a low grade he got for a paper. When he went to find out what was wrong, he was told that he was deliberately given that grade though he deserved better, that they have a policy of keeping student grades low. A lecturer may also set hard exams to punish students for misbehaving at lectures, or in order to get fewer students to answer his/her question when there is a choice(fewer students answering your questions means you have less marking to do), and so on.
