THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SANDWICH STUDENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND COUNSELLING
ABSTRACT
The study attempted to examine the effect of employment on academic performance amongst Sandwich students at the University of Lagos.  Some relevant literature reviews were carried out under important sub-headings. The descriptive research survey was employed in this study to assess the opinions of the selected respondents using the questionnaire and the sampling technique.  A total of 200 (two hundred) respondents were selected and used in this study to represent the entire population of the study. A total of 4(four) null hypotheses were formulated and tested in this study using the independent t-test statistical tool at 0.05 level of significance.  At the end of the data analyses, the following results were obtained: Hypothesis one revealed that there is a significant effect of employment on sandwich students’ academic performance Hypothesis two found that there is found that there is a significant difference between the academic performance of students in sandwich programmes and those in full-time programmes. Finally, hypothesis three showed that there is a significant gender difference in the academic performance of students due to engagement in employment.  Based on the conclusions reached in this study, it is recommended that: Sandwich students should ensure that they arrange themselves proper concerning their works and their academic career.  This is because, they would be doing disservice to themselves if they only pay attention to their works at the detriment of their academics.  In the light of this, sandwich students ought not to engage themselves in work activities that can make them to loose focus in their educational careers. The school authority and decision-makers in the school, should look into the Sandwich programme and ensure that the programme is formatted in such a way that it is not cumbersome to the students, especially students who combine work with schooling at University of Lagos
CHAPTER ONE
1.1Â Introduction
Employment for individuals, means having a job or other gainful occupation. For a nation, total employment is a measure of how well the economy provides opportunity to all who are willing and able to work. In a statistical sense, workers are considered employed if they have either full or part-time paying jobs or are self-employed, even if they are not working at a given time for reasons of health, strike or vacation (Darby, 2003).
The growing and expanding economic responsibilities of governments at the Federal and State levels, have affected the capability of governments to continuously recruit adequately qualified teachers to meet with the expanding students’ enrolment in Nigerian secondary schools. Therefore, the use of Sandwich Programmes and part-time programmes of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, remains a dependable source of improving serving teachers’ professional and academic quality as well as improving the number of teachers for Nigerian secondary schools quantitatively and improving qualitatively with respect to standards (Mezieobi, 2006).
