Stakeholders urge NUC to reduce Private Universities’ application fees

Some stakeholders in the education sector have called on the National Universities Commission (NUC) to revisit and look into its recent upward review of application fees for the establishment of private universities.

The stakeholders said the review by the NUC must be looked into for the posterity of mass literacy in the country.

They told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in separate interviews in Abuja that the upward review would reduce the number of applications which would in turn hinder mass literacy growth in the country.

According to them, it will also force private universities to begin taxing the students who are already having it difficult to pay their fees.

BRANDECONOMY recalls that the NUC had increased the fee for purchasing application forms for the establishment of private universities from N1 million to N5 million.

NUC had in a statement signed by its Executive Secretary, Abdullahi Ribadu, added that the processing fee for the application had been raised from N5 million to N25 million.

Ribadu noted that the fee hike aims to improve universities coordination, adding that it would better position the newly established private universities to address the challenges of the 21st century.

Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the Emeritus Archbishop of Abuja Metropolitan Archdiocese, while expressing his views said that the review must be looked into for the posterity of mass literacy in the country.

Onaiyekan said, “May be there are some people who have set up universities to make money and they charge heavy fees for that purpose.

“But I do know that there are many non-state universities, I won’t even call them private, non-public universities that are not set up to make money.”

He further maintained that whether NUC put the fees at N5 million or N1 billion, the basic argument was where do they (NUC) expect the universities to get the money from?

The cleric, who queried the upward review, said it would force private universities to begin taxing the students who were already having it difficult to pay their fees.

“Is this the way to encourage university education? or do you mean only parents who are rich and who can pay millions can send their children to school?

”If it was like that when I went to school, if it was like that when those men at the NUC went to school, they would never have entered university,” he said.

Onaiyekan also urged the Federal Government to establish new commission to oversee the establishment of private universities in the country.

He said the establishment of new commission became necessary as most private universities were not profit oriented.

According to him, It has been my own position since we started our own private university-Veritas University, that there is need for a radical change of attitude in this regard.

“NUC was established to manage and coordinate what happens in public-funded universities. NUC’s structures are to take care of public universities that are funded with public funds.

“At that time, there were no private universities. And I will be saying, since the government decided to allow private universities to start to work, there was need to either totally review how NUC deals with private universities.

“You cannot deal with them exactly the way as you are dealing with public universities.

“But even better still, there was need to set up another institution in which proprietors and managers of private universities will have a stake to manage private universities, not NUC,” Onaiyekan said.

According to him, NUC comes out with policies which look on private universities as if they are commercial institutions from where they can make money.

Also, Prof. Noah Yusuf, Vice-Chancellor, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, said there were proliferation of universities in which some don’t have the stand to grow.

According to him, as the name connotes, private university is almost like a private concern and anyone who wants to set up one must have been prepared.

“ They must have the financial strength to pursue it and I’m sure NUC’s decision will be based on their past experience in terms of some universities who started but they cannot continue.

“They cannot go ahead with operations and are just hanging in the limbo, you can’t go ahead, you can’t go backward. And I’m sure that should be the reason.

“So, such money would have been in `bizarre for them in case they have serious problem that can also be used to augment and to lift them up,’’ he said.

On his part, Prof. Emeritus, Benjamin Ozumba,  Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Nigeria,  said the review was like a ‘thunderbolt’ to stakeholders as the discourse had not been brought to the table.

Ozunba explained that tertiary education in Nigeria was undersubscribed, compared to global standards, hence the upward review was uncalled for.

According to him,  the NUC is bringing this policy to weed/reduce the number of applications which will hinder mass literacy growth in the country.

“What percentage of Nigerians get tertiary education and what percentage of Nigerians are required for Nigeria to go forward?

“So many things in Nigeria need to be reviewed downwards.  In Ethiopia for example,  students’ accommodation is free and if you don’t use the accommodation, you get paid.

“What we should be considering is looking for ways to improve our public universities by providing adequate funds to improve infrastructure in public universities to be of global standards, ” he said.

The former vice-chancellor advised the federal government to take a clue from Germany that has no private universities but the government invested heavily in the public universities.

He explained that states universities were not doing enough as they overpriced the institutions.

He maintained that increasing application and processing fees of private universities would only pose challenge to the nation’s university education that was striving to grow.

“So many private universities are doing well, take for example,  Lead university,  Covenant University, Redeemers University, Afe Babalola University and the rest are performing well.

“They are filling the gaps the public universities are not able to fill.

“So, this review by the NUC is a rough tactic that won’t take us anywhere as a nation,” he said.