Parental Prominence, Student Housing Quality and Academic Success among Public Universities Students in Southwest, Nigeria

University education, if properly managed remains an appropriate mechanism through which human and nation development could be attained. In spite of numerous studies that have explored academic performance in Nigeria, the contributions of parental prominence and student housing quality on academic success are yet to be explored in the nation’s public universities. This study addresses this gap by raising this question: to what extent does parental prominence and student housing predict the attainment of academic success among university undergraduates? The cross-sectional survey design, with multi-stage and purposive sampling technique was adopted. Primary information was sourced from 426 final year students of OAU, OOU and AAUA. The outcome variable of this study was academic success; and it was measured by student’s attainment of outstanding or weak academic success. The key explanatory variables were parental prominence and student housing quality. Multivariate rank ordered-logistic regression and ANOVA was applied using Stata 14. Results showed that academic success was negatively associated with student housing quality. Also, results showed that parental prominence (marital status, employment status, gender preference, occupation type) were statistically associated with academic success. Results further showed that student housing quality and financial supports contributed about 9% to academic success. The study concluded that the challenges posed by inadequate and poor student housing facilities, lack of adequate financial supports for university students, parental gender preference in meeting-up with education needs of their children must be addressed in order to stimulate the attainment of outstanding academic success among students of public universities in Southwest, Nigeria.