Continued... ON LASU FEES, AN OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR FASHOLA II On enrolment trend, before now, LASU was used to being a university of first choice. At present, the reverse is the case. Students that never choose LASU as a choice university can now choose LASU after they might have not been offered admission in other schools. In LASU today, we now have third and fourth round of post-UTME exams after rigorous advertisements. The enrolment trend has dropped drastically from 4,570 in 2006 to 1,416 in 2014. Sir, the implication of this is that innovations and intellectual competitiveness amongst the students that the university thrives on has dwindled. Our students will not be exposed to solving societal problems. How then do we want the gown to relate with town? Looking at the enrolment list for 2013/2014, PHE 1, French 1, Fisheries and Aquatic Biology 2, Physics 1, yet some departments are not on that list. This trend is bringing LASU of 24,000 students in those days to LASU of 6,000 students by next academic session. From the above illustration, the government is paying dearly for it! By under utilizing the infrastructure and human resources in LASU, the Lagos State Government is paying more. The same fixed overhead cost such as salary, that can be used to effectively train 4,500 students is used to train 1,000 students. The effects of the fee hike on enrolment take more from the government. As studentship drops, it doubles the cost incurred per student. Assuming LASG spends 700,000 on students at 2,000 students, the cost will increase to N1.4 Million, if the number of students drops to 1,000 whereas we are entitled to 5,000 students from NUC quota and the university’s carrying capacity. 4,000 slots are lying fallow! What of the implications on social security? This is the general concept of social wellbeing and systems that ensure it. One of it is education. Abraham Lincoln said “if your run away from responsibility, you will be held responsible” for Lagos not to be held responsible in the nearest future, the government must stand up to the responsibility of making tertiary education, in fact, LASU must be affordable to the teeming youths in Lagos State. The dreams of thousands of youths out there have been shattered by the fee hike. One day, they will want to come back asking for their rights, so Lagos state must begin to invest heavily in security. The insurgency in the North today can be premised on their level of literacy. They failed to encourage their children then to read and that is why they are classified as Educationally Less Developed States. From the National Bureau of Statistic (2011), 67.6% of youths in Yobe state are not read. Sir, we want to establish here that there is a correlation between peace and literacy rate; On the global peace rank, Afghanistan literacy level is 28.1% ranked 162, Iceland 99%; 1, Sudan 27%; 143, Nigeria 67.8%; 148 and Niger 26.7%; 127. There is also an astronomical dropout rate. There are several departments where some of the few students admitted had dropped out because they could not cope with the huge amount of money. For others that are struggling, the hope that will finish with this current fee regime is bleak. In department of Computer Science Education 5 dropped out of 20 that were admitted. In Fisheries and Aquatic Biology, 60 was admitted, 46 dropped out and of the 14 left, only 4 had registered as at January 23, 2014 due to the fee hike. The continued progress of Lagos State University is the wish of any well meaningful stakeholder of the university. The Lagos State University Students’ Union, as the foremost representative of the students, also craves for the progress and change of this great citadel of learning. We SAY NO TO THE NEW REGIME OF FEES because Lagos State is the third largest city in Africa after Cairo and Kinshasa; and the sixth emerging mega city in the world and in fact, it is richer than many of the African countries. According to the Pro-chancellor, Mr. Bode Augusto, “the fee hike is not enough to pay salaries for three months as LASU needs N900,000,000 a month to survive”. On the 20th of March after the Commissioner for works Dr. Babafemi Hamzat inspected the on-going projects in LASU, the Vice Chancellor affirmed that “the infrastructural development in LASU has nothing to do with the fee hike”. Now the question is; why the fee hiked in LASU? Conclusively, Wilfred Pareto asserted that a change that makes at least one individual better off and makes no individual worse off, is an improvement in social welfare. Conversely, a change that makes one individual better off and at least makes one individual worse off is a decrease in social welfare. Therefore making LASU a school for the rich and the poor must not deprive the poor access to higher education in order not to experience a decrease in social welfare. To these, we submit. NURUDEEN, Yusuf Temilola- Optimist President, Lagos State University Students’ Union.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 10:24:29 +0000
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