For a country where a candidate scored 247 marks in 1983 to study philosophy at the University of Ife without being considered because of its competitiveness, the Tuesday decision of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board to make 120 out of 400 maximum points as the cut-off mark for admission to universities for the 2017/2018 academic session provides an opportunity for soul-searching.
The Registrar of JAMB, Is’haq Oloyede, who announced this in Abuja, said the decision was reached after a policy meeting with vice-chancellors, provosts and rectors of colleges of education and polytechnics respectively. Besides the universities, CoEs and polytechnics have 100 cut-off mark. Instructively, the pronouncement has fostered a wave of excoriation in the country because of its pernicious implications, especially on quality. The registrar wants us to believe that the resolution was consensual.
The action cannot be rationalised in any way, as it is decidedly retrogressive and suspicious. A total of 1.7 million candidates sat this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, out of which 569,395 of them scored 200, which is 50 per cent, and above, just as 23 per cent of the total candidates scored below 160. The performance breakdown showed that a sufficient number of candidates scored more than the 180 cut-off mark for last year, enough for JAMB to raise the bar, instead of doing otherwise.
Certainly, the action is not in the national interest, nor that of candidates seeking quality university education. We also believe that no vice-chancellor worth his salt will acquiesce to this debasement of standards, except those who are time-servers and vehicles for sectional and unedifying agenda. Although Oloyede maintained that universities were at liberty to set their own benchmarks and conduct post-UTME tests to determine those to admit, it does not obviate the fact that some candidates with the 120 cut-off will secure admission, while many with more than 200 score will be denied. And that is the danger.
No doubt, this set-up will worsen corruption and injustice already grafted in the system, which universities, as citadels of learning, are not established to promote. The 120 cut-off mark translates to 30 per cent, which is a rank failure in any standard examination in the world. Accepting it as Nigeria’s admission benchmark bodes ill for quality university education. The import of the decision is that it is an official imprimatur of mediocrity or violence to the system.
Universities, by their global nature, are centres of excellence: for teaching, learning, research and innovation. It is a hallowed intellectual space for competition and hard work; and not for complacency or indolence. Any candidate who scores 120 out of 400 marks, or is admitted with it, is simply not ready just for university learning.
Britain that bequeathed western education to Nigeria had introduced the Advanced Level education system, through which intellectually ill-equipped materials are noticed with their poor grades, and weeded out. While the system has since been discarded here, Britain still uses it. The same could be said of the defunct 6-3-3-4 system of education. Its implementation did not ferret out pupils without the required intelligence quotient to continue academic pursuits. Mass promotion of pupils to the next class was a new low in many states, thus creating the present below average candidates aspiring to acquire university education.
There is a sense in which it could be said, therefore, that the lowered cut-off mark is a well orchestrated plan to extend the topsy-turvy in admission standards into the 104 Unity Colleges to higher education. This epic mockery of merit ensured that a pupil from Anambra or Imo State, for example, scored 138 or 139 out of 200 marks to be admitted, whereas his or her counterpart from Yobe and Taraba states needed just 2 and 3 marks to attend the same school, as was the case in 2013. This scenario has governed intakes for years now, thereby eroding excellence for which those schools were renowned in the remote past.
Absurdities in university admission in Nigeria and the reproach degrees churned out receive from within and outside our shores, call for urgent remedial action. Many Nigerians have called for the re-introduction of A-Level examinations to serve as a clearing house. Government should admit its mistakes and consider this, the way it did with the public agitation for history to return to the classroom.
The fundamental purpose of university is the discovery and dissemination of knowledge for the betterment of communities and society writ large. And the reputation of a university is determined by the quality of its graduates. This is why Oxford University draws attention to foreign students seeking its offer by stating, “Please be aware that competition for places at Oxford is very strong.” This is why its conditional offer for students studying A-Levels range between A* A* A and AAA. In Scotland, a candidate is required to score AA for two subjects or AAB for three subjects.
For a candidate taking the redesigned Scholastic Aptitude Test – the American system – Oxford says, as from 2016, is expected to achieve SAT Reasoning Test with at least 1,400 in Critical Reading and Mathematics and also 700 or more in Writing, giving a combined score of at least 2,100 (out of 2400). In Singapore too, students are reminded that they will undergo competitive examination conducted and evaluated by the university itself. “Good scores are expected out of students,” is a strong advisory.
When these pictures are juxtaposed with the JAMB controversial benchmark of 120, it becomes obvious that our education policymakers are out of tune with global realities. These comparisons are imperative because graduates all over the world end up in one place: the global job market. Our degrees are already being spurned locally, with many employers of labour describing many graduates as unemployable, unable to even write passable applications. How long are we going to play politics with education?
The situation need not be worsened with the latest scandalous admission regulation. The reaction of Afe Babalola, proprietor of a private university, to this howler, rejecting it and calling for an urgent education summit, puts a lie to the claim that the 120 benchmark was a unanimous decision of stakeholders. Illegal 17,160 intakes are in the universities, according to the JAMB boss. These were candidates that could not pass the UTME. A leeway should not be created for them. The 120 cut-off serves this dubious objective. We completely reject it.
