THE NEED FOR GUIDANCE AND COUNCELING SERVICES AMONG NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

THE NEED FOR GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING SERVICES AMONG NIGERIA UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Guidance and counselling services in the university promote the personal social planning and programming for students with special learning needs. The students need to prepare themselves not only academically but also socially in order for them to gain acceptance into the new community. It’s also good to know that, the undergraduates, even though a good number of them are adults, there is the need to guide them if the purpose which they are in the university is to be achieved. Also, majority of students in the University are faced with anxiety and stress, to be able to handle situation like this, they need counselling. The services of guidance and counselling in tertiary institution is to bring about well guided and properly counselled among university undergraduates who will be leaders of tomorrow because the role of guidance and counselling cannot be over emphasized. Most university administrators in Nigeria are searching for stability as a way out of crises and a means to restore some lasting tranquility on campuses.
Recently, dramatic increase in violence and revolutionary behaviour among students has almost attained a high proportion throughout the world. Guidance and counselling services are needed in order to find lasting solutions to some problems that have plagued institutions of learning for a very long time. Students need counselling programme as a result of these unruly behaviours. In order words, university undergraduates need help to resolve their home, social, academics, health, emotional, vocational, financial and religious problems. The undergraduates at this level are made to understand the nature and complexity of their problems and better means of solving the problems. Fresh students appear to be plagued by the questions self-defined by their present status within the community, by their position within their peer group and by their academic performances in secondary school. Without counselling programme/support, they will feel inferior and be defeated of their social identities. Difficulties may come the way of new students trying to adjust to the new environment and they will find it painful and hectic. This may be due to the differences they encounter in life when in secondary schools.
Values espoused by other students are social climate, course of study, study conditions and degree of freedom and adjustment to these differences often result in crises of some sort. The crises can be averted if guidance and counselling services are made available to this category of students at the point of entering into the university.

THE NEED FOR GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING SERVICES AMONG NIGERIA UNIVERSITY STUDENTS