LAUTECH increase fees ‘beyond reach of most students’

The governing council of the Ladoke Akinola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, has increased the tuition fees to be paid by its students across levels.

Medical, Nursing and Biomedical students are now billed N300,000, while their counterparts in Engineering are to pay 250,000. Students of the Faculties of Agricultural Sciences, Basic Medical Sciences, Environmental Sciences and Applied Sciences will pay N200,000.

The new fees regime is to take effect from the beginning of the next 2018/19 session and is applied to the current 100-400 level students, most of whom, one student anonymously suggested, would not be able to pay.

This development was made public via a public memo obtained by this newspaper.

According to the memo, the governing council decided the new fees regime at its 133rd on 5 July 2018 ‘in consonance with the financial realities the University was facing.

The new regime comes too high compared with the current fees of N63,500 and N72,500 for indigenous and nonindigenous returning students, respectively.

Although the memo mentioned consideration of scholarships for indigent students, there are no clear modalities to help poor students remove barriers to tertiary education.

The present 100 level students paid N120,000 (indigenes) and N150,000 for non-indigenes.

Many students have condemned the school for the spike, saying the most of the students would not be able to pay.

Some suggested a fresh strike is looming at the school which was recently closed for several months.