The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, responsible for the UTME, in a new policy has made it compulsory for candidates to pick one university, one polytechnic, one college of education and one innovative enterprise institute (IEI) when registering for their exams.
Many candidates registering for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, UTME, were shocked when they were given the choice to pick only one university of their choice, contrary to the traditional first and second choice options of universities and/or polytechnics.
The Registrar, JAMB, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, believes that this policy will go a long way in solving the admission crisis bedevilling the country.
He said: “Most university managements claim that they do not run second class universities, and as a result, do not want to admit students who choose them as a second choice. From our experience, universities refuse to take students who make them a second choice, but they do not hesitate to collect the students’ money when they want to write the post-UTME; and this is not fair to students.
So last year, Vice Chancellors of universities, provosts of Polytechnics and other stakeholders in the sector decided that students should only pick one university, one polytechnic, one college of education and one innovative enterprise institute when applying to write the UTME. If they do not follow these instructions, they cannot apply. We are also hoping that this will go a long way to curb the admission crisis. A lot of times, there are spaces in tertiary institutions other than universities, but the bottle neck lies in the fact that everyone wants to go to the university.
So, beyond this move, the government must go a step further to make these tertiary institutions degree-awarding institutions.
Professor Oby Ezekwesili had suggested this earlier. For example, Polytechnics should be given the authority to award Bachelor of Technology awards. This will go a long way in solving the dichotomy that exists which causes candidates to flock mostly to the universities.”
In the past few years, the nation’s higher institutions have only been able to accommodate about one third of the population of teeming candidates who write the UTME every year. Whether the new resolutions made by JAMB will help solve the admission crisis remains to be seen.
