The Vice-Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, Prof. Shadrach Akindele, has said the prevailing economic realities and the new salary structure approved by the Federal Government necessitated the upward adjustment of fees by the institution.

Akindele said the rising cost of living had considerably increased the running costs of universities, making it difficult to sustain operations without reviewing fees.

He stated this on Monday during a press briefing heralding activities for the 18th convocation of the institution.

The Vice-Chancellor noted that if private universities failed to key into the new salary structure approved by the Federal Government, they might lose staff members to federal institutions.

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.

“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.

Highlighting other programmes, Akindele said the convocation lecture would be delivered by the Chief Executive Officer of A’s Consulting, Erinle Adeola, while an award and recognition ceremony to appreciate those whose contributions deserved the attention of the wider university community would also be held.

Reviewing the achievements of the university in the outgoing academic year, Akindele said the management 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. (The PUNCH)