A Web Based Hostel Management System for Nigerian Universities

Abstract

Background: In a world full of evolving universities, there is the need for a computerized web-based hostel management and allocation system due to the vast number of students who need hostel accommodation to undergo successful studies far away from home. Some of the problems include: insufficient hostels, poor management of existing hostels, poor students’ record handling leading to students who have paid hostel fees not getting rooms, illegal room occupants and poor maintenance of hostel facilities. In view of all of these existing problems, it is necessary to design a system capable of managing a database which allocates hostel to students. It is imperative therefore to make hostel allocation, management, and safekeeping of students and staff data safe and easily accessible, hence this study. Objectives: Using Anchor University Lagos as a case study, this paper addresses some of the problems encountered in the manual allocation of hostels to students in Universities in Nigeria. Methods: The hostel management system designed in this study keeps track of all the available rooms and its occupants. This hostel management system was implemented using HTML, PHP and MySQL. Results: The novelty of our system is in its capacity to eliminate instances of double allocation, effectively track students records through real-time access to the database and as such ensure better management of hostel facilities. Conclusions: In view of the results obtained from this study, it is our recommendation that Universities across the world should adopt web-based hostel management systems in order to avoid the pitfalls associated with manual hostel management.

Keywords: Software Engineering, Nigerian Universities, Computation and intelligent design, Hostel management, Web-based application