Our dear tertiary institution have, over the years, found a legal way to extort students who ordinarily find it difficult to pay their school fees after they’ve been offered admission.
You will agree with me that the number of students granted admissions per year is low compared with the number of students who applied.
Most times, students go as far as paying a stipulated amount just to secure admission.
According to reports made by Allafrica.com, no fewer than one million students seeking admission through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) every year have failed to get slots in tertiary institutions in Nigeria as the system cannot admit more than 600,000 in any given year.
In 2013, 1,629,102 registered for UTME, in 2014, it was 1,606753 and 1,000,400 in 2015. For 2016, a total of 1,589,175 registered, just as 1,736,571 and 1,662,762 registered in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
We have 158 universities and over 300 polytechnics, colleges of education and monotechnics and their carrying capacity is still barely above 600,000.
Meanwhile, an average of 1.6 million UTME candidates register for entrance examination yearly.
After going through the pains of waking up late at night to read, paying much to get tutored, you’re being admitted and later asked to pay in order to accept the admission given to you.
I am of the opinion that after a student has secured an admission, which cannot be possible without purchase of the application form, such student shouldn’t be mandated to pay any amount to accept the admission given to him/her by the school authorities.
You telling me to pay for an acceptance fee is telling me to pay to accept my admission giving to me in good fate by the school authorities who found me worthy of such admission.
Acceptance fee in some institutions are outrageous. Some students pay #60,000 for acceptance fee, an amount that is more than some other tertiary institution’s school fees.
After paying for JAMB, you go on to pay for the application form, then after you’ve been granted admission, you pay for acceptance fee, then school fees. This is just too much.
As education in Nigeria is becoming expensive, some unnecessary fees mandated by school authorities should be abolished – acceptance fee most importantly.
