Fee Hike: Ajasin Varsity sets up Student Support Unit to help physically challenged, indigent students

The Management of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, has moved to fulfill its promise to ease payment of school fees by indigent but brilliant students, and the physically challenged in the University. To achieve this end, Management has set up a Student Support Unit to coordinate the administration of the palliatives.

According the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Igbekele Ajibefun, the Student Support Unit will coordinate the various support efforts being looked into to help students cope with the payment of fees, especially with the recent increase in the fees payable in the University.

The VC added that the support schemes being looked into include loans, scholarships, as well as an expansion of the University’s Work-Study Scheme.

In his words, “With the new increase in fees, the University Governing Council approved some palliatives to make it easy for students to cope with payment. One of such schemes is the loan scheme. We also have scholarship, expansion of the Work-Study Scheme, and many others.

“Just last week, an office called the Student Support Unit was created under the Vice Chancellor’s Office, and a Coordinator was appointed to run the office. The forms are out, and we are starting with the physically-challenged students and a form has been designed for them. One of the areas of support for the physically- challenged is that half of their fees will be paid by the University while they pay the remaining half.

“Another support for students is the provision of scholarships for brilliant students as is done all over the world. There will be criteria to determine who benefits from the scheme, but I can tell you that the main criterion will be academic performance. A committee has been set up to attend to all that has to do with student loans, scholarship and so on. It will come up with the criteria for selecting beneficiaries for the available support schemes.

“But more importantly is that we want to attend to our students who are physically challenged and we are assuring them that all physically-challenged students will benefit from the scheme. We already know them as we have all of them in one hostel. But for other categories of students, their benefitting from the scheme depends on meeting the criteria. For the scholarship, there will be a minimum standard to be met, while the loans scheme will be for indigent but very bright students who cannot afford their fees. They must have in good academic standing to get the loans.

“And with the establishment of the office and constitution of the Committee to make recommendations, I think the University has commenced the promised support schemes. The Student Support Unit will coordinate issuance of forms, process submitted forms, verify the authenticity of claims, and the Committee will make recommendations for approval.”