Reports from the Cameroons indicate that the Ministry of Higher Education plans to separate the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, FSMS, into four new faculties.
The University of Buea Chapter of the National Union of Teachers of Higher Education, SYNES UB, officials in their 15th October 2016 noted that a special Committee has been set up to bring the university lecturers’ position in line with this proposed plan.
However, SYNES UB insisted that the Faculty of Social Sciences has to be preserved for cultural reasons.
Also, Prof. Martha S. Tumnde, Dean of FSMS declared that the senate of FSMS didn’t support the new structures.
The plan intends to merge the Social Sciences with the Arts Faculty to form a new faculty called the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Humanities. The FSMS Council found this wanting and not in the Anglo-Saxon spirit because Arts and Social Sciences are two distinct Faculties in English speaking Universities.
The plan will also see the merging of the Departments of Political Science and Public Administration; Geography, WOMEN, and Gender Studies; Sociology and Anthropology with the Faculty of Arts to form the new Faculty called Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Humanities. The Senate argued that if the plan to split the FSMS was to decongest its size, as such creating a new faculty with the above specifications would not meet that objective as the new faculty will still be congested.
As such lecturers argue that creating such a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences defeats the Anglo-Saxon tradition because Arts and Social Sciences is what obtains in the Francophone system and not in an Anglophone system
Also, other faculties to be developed from the FSMS are the Faculties of Law, Economics and Management; Law School; and School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
God is still saying something.
