BY Amaka Abayomi

Education Rights Campaign, ERC, has said the rationalisation of academic programmes at Lagos State University, LASU, will strangulate the institution’s workers.

It called on students of the institution to rise against any move to rationalise.

According to the Lagos State Coordinator, ERC, Mr. Adams Lateef, in a statement, the university’s Governing Council at its 100th meeting with the backing of the Lagos State Government, resolved to embark on rationalisation of courses that would see to the scrapping of departments and sacking of some teaching and non-teaching staff.

The statement read in part: “This plan was kick-started with the commercialisation of LASU, wherein students, who gained admission in the 2011/2012 academic session, were asked to pay between N193,750 and N348,750, a situation where only 1,951 students (39.8%) of over 4,903 students offered admission were admitted.

“This shows the obvious failure of the policy of commercialisation in the education sector. Failure to challenge the fee hike policy has led to the slow destruction of LASU.”

and public tertiary education in the state today. If this rationalisation of courses is allowed to sail through, teaching and non-academic staffs that will be hardest hit as several jobs will be lost.

“It would also, in the short and long-terms, lead to further shutting the door of university education to thousands of aspiring undergraduates who want to pursue academic careers in courses/departments that the Governing Council has penciled down for rationalisation.”