CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY:
Secretarial studies, simply put, is 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.
Secretarial studies 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.
Over the years, the secretary has been misrepresented, misapprehended, and misinterpreted as well, with this ugly development, a lot of students aspiring to professionalise on the ever increasing demand of secretaries in our fast 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.