Experts see blend of academics, leisure as crucial to students’ balanced development

Undergraduates in the nation’s tertiary institutions have come under severe criticism following what observers term their inability to strike a balance between academics and leisure. This situation, experts insist, has the potential to negatively impact on not just students’ personal lives but also the opportunities open to them after graduation.

While it may be argued that tertiary education in the country is terribly stressful and leaves little time for social activities, stakeholders nonetheless maintain that it is possible to juggle both aspects of school life so that positive spin-offs would result from the process.

Ginikanwa Nnamdi, an education psychologist, observes that the difficulties experienced by most students in this regard has evolved from a point where they pay attention to both studies and leisure, to a more worrying trend where they now rely on short cuts for academic success in tertiary institutions.

While Nnamdi admits that the overall routine of students in most tertiary institutions comes with new habits, responsibilities and increased workload which make the learning process more cumbersome, he however adds that they should be able to devise strategies through which they could maintain a balance between high-level academic success and social life.

“A situation where some students only focus on knowledge acquisition with no social integration skills will hinder them in the real world where some level of social and networking experience is required to effectively fit in as a team player,” he declares.

On this basis, he urges the management of tertiary institutions to encourage a mix of learning and social activities in the ivory towers, saying that this can be beneficial to both parties and produce rounded students in this global age.  For Adeoti Olumide, a Lagos-based educationist, there is the need for students to set their priorities right as far as academic and social life balance is concerned.

According to Olumide, this explains why stakeholders should devote their attention to how undergraduates manage their time, while insisting that it is crucial to their overall development given the prevailing academic culture in schools where students do well in some courses but perform woefully in others.

Kelechi Ewuzie