Avoiding varsity admission gridlock

I had always thought attempting the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) examinations six times before my victory on the seventh was phenomenal until I met a senior colleague who had a stride of nine attempts. This indeed is a far cry from the expectations of any applicant. It’s different strokeS for different folks. But sometimes we tend to over celebrate our struggles, not knowing that our lives today could be another man’s dream.  It was blissful recounting the days of striving to pass JAMB exams. We had one thing in common. We were poised to keep our university dreams alive even as we sojourned through the Polytechnic. We just kept attempting JAMB exams year in year out. Apparently, we did not want to suffer the ill fate that befalls HND holders in the ‘organised’ labour market. No thanks to the anomaly in the Nigerian tertiary education system.

Those days are behind us now, God has honoured our pursuits with feats higher than a first degree. But I am disturbed to say the least. One of the probing questions that’s been pacing my mind for some days now is: will the thousands of youths qualified for university education every year ever brand a Bachelor’s degree at the end of the day? I count myself lucky to have one! Let me take a case study of the University of Ibadan Distance Learning Centre (UIDLC) which is a JAMB accredited examination centre. As an officer of UIDLC. I visited the Centre’s Computer-Based Testing (CBT) Centre during the just concluded JAMB exams with my nose for news. What struck my heart was beyond news! I found that many of Nigerian youths are blind JAMB applicants. They just want to write the JAMB examination because it’s the next reasonable thing to do after O’level exams. For the first time in my life, I felt my personal struggles were uncalled for. If I had been circumspect or rather had due guidance and equipped with information, I could have had a good leverage.

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The UIDLC has four JAMB examination centres. Each centre, according to JAMB, should have 250 computer systems. Quite remarkably, the UIDLC CBT Centre has three halls of 500 computers each. Initially, JAMB accredited just three centres. But the centre was considered a bail out option when another centre in the city of Ibadan had hitches. With three batches per day, three thousand candidates wrote the examination on each day for seven days. Therefore, at the end of the examination, 21,00 candidates wrote the JAMB examination on the UIDLC facility alone. But even if they are all qualified for admission, UI has the capacity to admit only a little less than a quarter of them.

I empathised with the plight of these young folks. I had a chitchat with some of them. I was taken aback when I found that some of them were already threading the line of my struggles. A particular young man told me it was his sixth attempt! Now, the question begging for answers is this: does it have to be this way? Two problems can be highlighted here, the problem of not having the cognitive ability to pass JAMB exams and that of access to university education.  What then is the way out? In the frenzied thoughts that ran through my mind, I figured that these young folks should be thought how to maximize time while pursuing their academic goals. One does not really need a certificate to be gainfully employed these days. This stance may be mind-boggling but I believe if we embrace the real essence of work, academic pursuit would be put in the right perspective. The coming generation should be schooled to work for a learning not for an earning. When value is learnt on the job, the right financial compensation would be added to it.

What then can these youths do while they await university admission? They can learn a skill, engage in volunteering jobs, do community services or subscribe to apprenticeship. I am of the school of thought that experience is experience whether it is paid for or not. This is what gives some measure of direction to academic pursuits. When there is value to add, not many employers of labour care about academic qualifications. Problem solvers are valued more than mere certificate holders. Even at that, many graduates graduated from schools that failed to educate them.  I wish to assert at this juncture that Open Distance Education (ODE) is an inevitable bail out from the JAMB yearly grind. This is the ultimate and indeed global solution to access. With the unlimited enrolment capacity of Open Distance Learning (ODL), it is disheartening that its great potentials are not being embraced and explored by young folks.

It pays to engage in capacity building and self-development while schooling than be confined to academic routines for four to seven years only to graduate more miserable in the ‘labour market’ than when in the ‘JAMB market’. This is the leverage ODE offers. Not everyone will have the opportunity of patronizing the four walls of a university. Nigeria may not be at the peak of global best practices yet but if the potentials are consciously harnessed and widely embraced by the public, Nigeria would definitely have a paradigm shift in educational pursuit.

So, if you are reading this piece, it is about time you joined the few who have seen the light. We cannot continue to seek the four walls when the sky is there for a limitless soar. This is the tenet upon which ODE was founded.

• Olajide is a Communications Officer at the University of Ibadan, Distance Learning Centre