JAMB’s new admission policy

PERHAPS as part of the innovations consequent on the recent change of leadership at its headquarters, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) recently unveiled new measures to address the lapses noticed in the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), particularly in the past few years. Part of the laudable objectives set out by the board is to harness the power of technology as a means of simplifying the admissions process. As part of the new initiatives, the board has restructured the registration platform to allow for only one choice of public university. Thus, the new registration platform will now be first choice, second choice, third choice and fourth choice and not most preferred, preferred etc as it was.

According to JAMB, “Candidates’ first choice can be a college, university, innovative enterprises institutions or polytechnic/monotechnic. However, if a candidate makes a public university his first choice, he will not have any public university to choose for second, third and fourth choice. He will have on the remaining three choices, a college, a polytechnic, private university and IEI’S. However, candidates for the 2017 UTME can now select NCE (College) or ND (polytechnic/monotechnic) as their first choice up to third choice and the fourth IEI. They can select the IEI (Innovative Enterprise Institution, ND) as their first choice up to the 4th choice, but can only pick a public university once.” The board hinged the ‘restructuring’ on the need to expand the opportunities available to candidates as almost all the public universities do not consider candidates on the second choice list because they hardly exhaust their first choice. In essence, candidates can no longer opt to study in more than a public university, whether federal or state.

Given that only about 400,000 candidates out of an average of 1.5 million taking the UTME are absorbed by the nation’s universities because of their limited carrying capacity, there is no doubt that any measure aimed at expanding the scope of opportunities available to candidates is a step in the right direction. In this connection, we commend JAMB’s concern with addressing the plight of admission seekers. It is certainly true that only candidates that make the public universities their first choice are considered for admission in those universities. Again, leaving hundreds of thousands of qualified applicants without any option of higher education on a yearly basis has very grave implications for Nigeria’s socioeconomic development as well as for national security.

To say the least, the alarming number of candidates rejected during the admission process can only bode ill for the nation. An idle hand, says the popular proverb, is the devil’s workshop. Thus, if there are opportunities for at least a substantial number of these candidates in other institutions, and assuming that standards are not unduly lowered just to give them a chance to access higher education, this will go a long way in reducing the burden imposed on the nation by their circumstances.

However,  we are of the view that the new policy adopted by JAMB could have benefited from greater scrutiny and consultations with critical stakeholders in the educational sector, not least because it seeks to circumscribe the power of the candidates to make choices.  This, we dare say, is clearly not within its purview. Although it is the examining body, it has no say over which candidate out of the millions taking the Ordinary Level examinations on a yearly basis will opt for higher education, whether in Nigeria or abroad, and neither should it take upon itself, roles that the framers of the law that established it never envisaged because they lie within the democratic locus of individual candidates. It is no secret that candidates make choices according to the socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions surrounding their existence or simply according to their predilections. It is those choices that JAMB as the examining body is supposed to act upon based on the candidates’ performance at the UTME.

The demerits of JAMB’s new policy were forcefully articulated by an advocacy group, the Nigeria Independence Group (NIG) led by a renowned scholar, Professor Akin Onigbinde. Drawing attention to its seeming dalliance with private universities, NIG posited:  “Statistics reveal that all the private universities in Nigeria have less than 30,000 students, combined. This figure is well below their collective carrying capacity as determined by the NUC. The disparity between available capacity and actual enrolment is expected to grow further, as more private universities get licensed by the government. Among other factors, the low enrollment rate is attributable to the high cost of private university education at a time when economic conditions continue to worsen, and the wariness of a public that sees most of these universities as business concerns that offer so little value in return for their charges, as they struggle to maximize profit in a very challenging business environment.”

It  is  indeed shocking that JAMB  would seek to compel candidates to make private universities their second choices while most Nigerians parents cannot afford to send their children to these universities. It would be naïve to assume that candidates opt to study in the public universities because they are unaware of the opportunities awaiting them in the private universities. While the poor student population in the private universities is a matter for urgent concern, there are arguably a number of options open to them to reverse the situation, including mergers and tailoring their charges to the socioeconomic realities in the country. JAMB’s new admission policy smacks of insensitivity and illegitimacy and should be abandoned forthwith.