The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) last month saw 1,606, 753 million candidates write this exam in 2014.
Out of the lots, about 1.2 million candidates will fail to gain admission this year, leaving a little above 500,000 (35 per cent) being admitted into the nation’s higher institutions.
This worrying statistics shows that the country doesn’t have enough higher institutions to cover for the high number of candidates seeking admissions each year. Though this is not the only reason for the low admission placements.
In a bid to increase access to university education, the current administration of President Goodluck Jonathan since 2011, has established 11 new universities across the six geo-political zones. With a carrying capacity of 500 students annually, stakeholders have argued that it has become imperative for a total overhauling of the nation’s higher education system.
Even after crossing the post-UTME and screening exercises by universities, polytechnics and Colleges of Education (CoE), the increasing number of unsuccessful applicants is worrisome.
351,232 disqualified: To be qualified to sit for post-UTME, an applicant must score at least 180 in the UTME and a minimum of 150 to be qualified to sit for screening examinations conducted by polytechnics and CoEs.
Unfortunately, in the just-concluded 2014 UTME, it was gathered that 351,232 applicants are already disqualified from sitting for screening exams owing to failure to meet the minimum 150 score, invalid results and absenteeism.
While over 277,753 applicants are already disqualified because they did not meet the 150 average score, 36,164 applicants had invalid results, 37,315 were absent during the PPT and DBT exams, even as 2,494 applicants still have their fate hanging in the balance as their results are currently withheld for further scrutiny by JAMB.
Of the 128 universities, 40 are federal-owned, 38 state-owned and 50 are privately-owned. There are also 21 federal-owned polytechnics, 38 state-owned and 18 privately-owned, with 63 CoEs. Yet due to the poor carrying-capacity of the nation’s tertiary institutions, over 922,247 applicants may not be admitted this year. The average Nigerian university has a carrying capacity of 4,500.
Expressing worry over the poor carrying capacities of universities, the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde just before the 2014 UTME, said that out of a total of 1,735,892 candidates that registered for the 2013 UTME, only 35 per cent were given provisional admission into public universities, lamenting that federal universities have not admitted up to 50 per cent of their carrying capacity.
One wonders why this is so as we see a lot of students being matriculated into the tertiary institutions every year.
However, we advice admission seekers to explore other alternatives instead of sitting at home every year waiting for JAM as there are about 213 higher institutions in Nigeria that does not require JAMB UTME for admissions.
These institutions are Colleges of Agriculture (CoAs), Colleges of Health Technology and Allied Institutions (CoHTAIs), Monotechnics, Vocational Enterprise Institutions (VEIs) and Innovation Enterprise Institutions (IEIs).
There are over 36 accredited CoAs in Nigeria: 17 are federal-owned, 19 are state-owned. We have over 51 CoHTAIs: Federal-owned (10), state-owned (40) and privately-owned (1). Also, there are over 27 accredited monotechnics in Nigeria: Federal-owned (23), state-owned (2) and privately-owned (2). Then over 99 accredited VEI and IEI centres in Nigeria.
These institutions are poorly subscribed yearly by admission seekers because there is little or no publicity employed by their various authorities and the menace of what many have described as the long-aged dichotomy placed by policymakers between universities and other higher institutions.
