Generally, the concept of academic planning is derived from the National Universities Commission (NUC) which has put   in place well-developed guidelines and parameters as well as Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS) to guide and facilitate academic planning process for ensuring quality in the university system. Academic planning became an important unit in university administration following the numerous challenges that universities have been facing in the last few decades.     These include but not limited to paucity of funds, facilities, manpower, increasing demand for university education, falling standard of education and cultism. As planning is generally an important aspect of management, Academic Planning was widely adopted to find solutions to the problems listed above and others not mentioned. In the light of this, Adebayo and Adeoye (2012) have averred that Academic Planning is the laboratory that works with other sub units of the university system to bring about the desired transformation. The importance of Academic Planning in the university system was aptly underscored by Mrs. A.O. Adebayo who was Chairperson of Committee of Directors of Academic Planning (CODAPNU) in 2008. In her own words, “It is a corporate engagement that must be accorded its rightful place for Nigerian universities to make remarkable progress.”

The Academic Planning Unit (APU) of the Rivers State University was established in 2003 when Prof. S.C. Achinehwu was the Vice-Chancellor. APU is a unit under the Vice Chancellor’s office as required by NUC. The following persons have served as Directors, Dr. Solomon A. Braide (Ag) (2003-2007), Prof. Emmanuel N. Amadi  (2008-2009), Prof. (Mrs) Maureen N. Koko   (2009-2015), Prof. Seth Accra-Jaja (2015 – 2016), Prof. Nnamdi S. Okoroma (2016 – 2020), Prof. P. N. Ede (2020-date).

The Philosophy behind Academic Planning can be glimpsed from Philip H. Coombs’ definition of Educational Planning (Coombs, 1970) and Adebayo (2012) who defined Academic Planning as “the application of rational, systematic analysis of the process of university development with the aim of making university education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals of its students and society”. It, therefore, implies that Academic Planning is an aspect of Educational Planning which centres on the statutory functions of the university namely: teaching, research and community service.

The National Universities Commission (NUC) was the first organization to establish Academic Planning Division (APD) in 1976. The following duties and responsibilities were prescribed for the division:

• Compiling and publishing three-year rolling plans for all federal universities;
• Preparing universities’ annual recurrent grant requests to the Federal Government;
• Allocating Federal Government’s recurrent grants to the federal universities;
• Assessing periodically the high level manpower requirements of the country in conjunction with appropriate government agencies;
• Preparing statistical digest of university education in the universities;
• Holding Annual Recurrent Estimates Hearings and analysing their financial projections and plans;
• Analysing the resource utilization in the universities
• Organizing and coordinating the accreditations of academic programmes in all Nigerian Universities; and,
• Supplying information on higher education to government departments, institutions and researchers (Uvah 2012).

The Academic Planning Unit of the Rivers State University is entrusted with the following responsibilities among others:

• Academic interpretations of policies.
• Advisory roles on academic policies.
• NUC institutional and programme accreditations.
• Preparing programmes for resource verification
• Production of University’s Annual Budget (Capital and Recurrent Expenditure (Estimates) to meet University System Annual Review Meeting (USARM)) of the NUC.
• Preparation of Academic Staff data showing specialization and areas of research interests to guide University administration.
• Production of reports on student data such as enrolment progression and graduation output.
• Coordination of the University Ad-Hoc Committee on Lecture and Examination Monitoring.
• Supervision of Post University Matriculation Examination (PUME).
• Coordination of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) intervention for Academic Staff Training and Development, Conference Attendance, Research and Book/Journal Production.

The Academic Planning Unit has made considerable achievements since its inception.

• Ensuring, and in collaboration with faculties and departments, that all academic programmes are duly accredited by the NUC and other professional bodies;
• Interfacing with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to secure scholarships, conference approvals, institutional and national research project approvals for staff.
• Securing Academic Book publication intervention approvals for Staff.
• Securing a TETFund sponsored Academic Journal known as ‘Nigerian Journal of Oil and Gas Technology’.

All programmes presented for NUC and professional accreditation received full accreditation in the past five accreditation seasons

Challenges

Most of the challenges plaguing RSU’s APU is similar to those facing the Rivers State University and Nigeria’s university community as a whole. In the critical area of accreditation of programmes for instance, the APU has to grapple with paucity of funds, engagement of appropriate number and quality of manpower, provision of functional facilities, such as laboratories and libraries.  The same can be said about academic staff training and development and research all of which are imperatives of modern citadels of learning at the university level.

Prospects

From the way the university system in Nigeria is structured, and NUC’s role as a regulatory and supervisory body, APUs in universities are indispensable. According to Adebayo (2012) it was after NUC had run APD for four years and became convinced of its usefulness that it directed in the early 1980s that APU be established in universities. Furthermore, Adebayo points out that the objective of establishing APU in the universities was to assist the NUC in gathering relevant information from the universities which would facilitate its (NUC’s) assignments. Perhaps, this is why in the view of Adebayo, the Academic Planning Unit in a University can be referred to as ‘a mini NUC’ within the University.