The Vice-Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, Prof. Shadrach Akindele, has attributed the institution’s recent tuition fee increase to current economic realities and the new salary structure approved by the Federal Government.
Akindele said the rising cost of living had significantly increased the cost of running universities, making it necessary to review fees to sustain the institution’s operations.
He disclosed this on Monday at a press briefing ahead of the university’s 18th convocation ceremony.
The Vice-Chancellor added that private universities risk losing their staff to federal institutions if they fail to adopt the new salary structure approved by the Federal Government.
He said, “The economic reality of the society in which we are living has made things become more expensive, such that our running costs have increased considerably. Now, with that new salary structure, which they implemented at the federal level for federal universities, if a private university doesn’t key into that, what you will observe is mass migration of staff from your university to federal universities, and there is nothing you can do to keep them.
“So, for you to be able to keep your staff, you must match at least what the Federal Government is paying, and because we are a private university, we don’t get grants from government, and we don’t want to compromise on the quality of service we provide; we rely on the fees we collect from students to pay our staff.”
Speaking on the 18th convocation of the institution, Akindele explained that the university would be graduating a total of 2,471 students at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
The Vice-Chancellor said a total of 2,030 students from the regular and affiliate institutions would graduate with Bachelor’s degrees, while 441 students would receive postgraduate degrees.
“A total of two thousand and thirty are graduating with Bachelor’s degrees (regular and affiliate institutions). At the postgraduate level, 441 (regular and affiliate institutions) will also be graduating,” the VC said.
On other activities lined up for the convocation, Akindele said the convocation lecture would be delivered by the Chief Executive Officer of A’s Consulting, Erinle Adeola.
He added that an award and recognition ceremony would also be held to honour individuals whose contributions had made a significant impact on the wider university community.
Reviewing the university’s achievements in the outgoing academic year, Akindele said the institution had secured full approval for 10 new undergraduate programmes.
“These programmes are Broadcasting, Public Relations, Advertising, Information and Media Studies, Journalism, Film Production, Criminology and Security Studies, Biotechnology, Software Engineering and Information Systems”, the Vice-Chancellor said.