Vice Chancellor of the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, has assured residents of the state that the institution’s newly-inaugurated distant learning programme would bridge its huge “admissions gap”.
Fagbohun gave the assurance in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Lagos.
He said that inadequate physical infrastructure at the institution to enable it accommodate more than 6000 students out of about 180,000 applications for admission, informed the idea of a technology-based distant learning programme to create more admission opportunities.
“LASU’s Open Distant Learning and Research Institute (ODLRI) will go a long way to bridge the huge admission gap here in LASU.
“Last session for instance, we received about 180,000 applications but we could only admit 6000; this is inadequate for a university servicing a mega city like Lagos.
“Since we cannot immediately increase physical infrastructure that we need to accommodate more students, we decided to employ technology to improve things in a different way,’’ he said.
The VC said that the programme, which will commence in September, will immediately create between 3000 to 5000 admission spaces, which will continue to increase, over time.
He added that the institute would also place emphasis on research to encourage innovations.
“The ODLRI programme will commence by September, and it will accommodate between 3000 to 5000 additional students, and this will continue to progress incrementally, so long as we continue to ” quality assure”.
“Quality assurance is important to us; that’s why, while other institutions are just doing the open distant learning programme, we added the research component to our own programme here.
“We appreciate the fact that, research is key because it will translate to innovations on the long run,’’ he said.
The LASU ODLRI was inaugurated on May 12 at the university campus in Ojo, Lagos.
During the inauguration, the chairman of the institute, Prof. Peter Okebukola, gave assurance that the programme will be rated as “one of the best in Africa’’ in terms of quality.
“Expectations are high, responsibilities are high, but we will make this institute one of the best in Africa,” Okebukola assured. (NAN)