INVESTIGATION INTO CAUSES OF POOR ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE STUDY OF SECRETARIAL STUDIES

1.1 Introduction

A secretarial study is an education for secretaryship which includes the training necessary to develop secretarial skills. These skills include human relation skills e.g. writing and translating shorthand with typewriter, knowing how to operate typewriter both manual and electric and finally being a computer literate. All these sub-skills prepare one for the secretarial functions for which a good secretary must possess. Secretarial studies is also part of the business education which many scholars have written on the subject, all have seen it as education that equips the learner with the skills which they required for use in business offices.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Over the years, the secretary has been misrepresented, misapprehended, and misinterpreted as well, with this ugly development, a lot of students aspiring to professionalize on the ever increasing demand of secretaries in our fast developing economy. Secretarial study is one of the most literate course one can offer among other related course. Those who successfully graduated from this course of study are always in terms of job opportunities.

In Nigeria for example, the demand for secretary by various business concern are exhaustible. In the recent past, the secretary by virtue of the training, specialization and responsibility takes the position of an administration which is a step below that of a manager. At present, responsibility below on a secretary varies from one business concern to another and that is aspiring to the managerial post. All these are dependent on hand work, further training and experience. Even with the technological revolution in the office, the place of the secretary remains unthreatened. The secretary has unlimited career protests, she is sometimes referred to as a live-wire of an organization or office encyclopaedia among other befitting names.

Secretaries receive adequate training to cope with versatility in an increasingly complex and automated modern office. But amidst all these available opportunities for the secretary, there has been a negative attitude among the present day students in studying the course in the tertiary institutions especially among the males. The scarcity of proficient secretaries has been remarkable in our developing economy.

Hence the dire need for the study, the “causes of students poor attitude towards the study of secretarial studies in tertiary institutions” with a view of finding out the problems and then solving them. Perhaps, the most crucial and challenging questions in the minds of secretarial administration educators is what to do in order to keep pace with technological change in the secretarial office equipment and not poor enrolment into the course.

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to investigate the Causes of Poor Attitudes towards the Study of Secretarial Studies.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

For quite some time now, there has been a decline on the number of prospective school learners who offer secretarial studies in tertiary institutions. Moreover, a higher percentage of those who apply to read the course nowadays has been observed to be females.

In another development, some students offering the course claimed that it was their inability to fit into other various prestigious disciplines that made them to settle for the secretarial profession. This ugly development has continued as a matter of fact to be a source of worry to business educators and management of tertiary institutions that offer this course.

It is however envisaged that if this situation continues unchecked, there will be a serious scarcity of efficient and proficient secretaries to man the various business offices spans up in every part of the country. In a similar development, some secretarial positions demand a masculine hand equally avoid all these feminish “leaves” prominent among the female secretaries.

It has also been observed that some students do not receive guidance and counselling in order to know the importance of the course. It is in view of these enormous indispensable and challenging studies of the present day secretary that the researcher delved into the study in order to investigate, analyse the cause for students poor attitude towards the study of secretarial studies in tertiary institutions in Enugu State and this recommend valuable and lasting solutions too.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to investigate the Causes of Poor Attitudes towards the Study of Secretarial Studies. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To investigate whether there are equipment for the teaching and learning of the course.
2. To find out why many students are not interested in secretarial administration course.
3. To investigate whether students were being guided by a guidance and councilor before choosing courses
4. To find out why women have dominated the profession
5. To make suitable recommendation on the major courses of students’ poor attitude towards the study of secretarial administration in tertiary institutions in Enugu State.

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Is the secretarial department adequately equipped and funded to handle the impacting of skilled knowledge to the students?
• Do enrolling students have career guidance before being admitted to study secretarial studies?
• Why is the career dominated by female?
• What could be the solution to the problem of students’ poor attitude towards the study of secretarial administration?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

• H0: Secretarial department is not adequately equipped and funded to handle the impacting of skilled knowledge to the students
• H1: Secretarial department adequately equipped and funded to handle the impacting of skilled knowledge to the students

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1.7 Significance of Study

In the end of this research work, it is hoped that useful ideas will be proffered to the students who wants to do secretarial administration in Enugu State and Nigeria as a whole.

The study will also help to correct the idea that secretarial administration is a course for people with low mentality or handicap in academics.

This study will equally help to enlighten the prospective students to know that there is no gender discrimination in the course. This study will help to correct some negative attitude and ginger students towards reading the course.

The study and the recommendations will encourage the students to have interest in secretarial administration course. This will provide qualified personnel to meet high demand of department and industries in our changing society.

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1.8 Scope of Study

This research work is designed to cover only the causes of students’ poor attitude towards the study of secretarial administration in the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu and Our Saviour Institute of Science and Technology, (OSISATEC), Enugu.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).