Tertiary education in Nigeria is in a wretched shape. A central factor in the debacle is the cumbersome university admission process, which has given a majority of the 1.5 million seeking admission each year a kick in the teeth by excluding them from making it to college. In recognition of this fiasco, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, has announced the cancellation of the post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations for candidates seeking admission to higher institutions in 2016. The intention is to ease the suffering of candidates but, really, it is just scratching the problem on the surface.
The crisis runs deeper than scrapping the post-UTME; there are fundamental issues plaguing the system that need an all-encompassing solution. Nobody should be deceived that the termination of the post-UTME will sweep away the crisis. This is a backward step in the modernisation of the Nigerian university system. The current system of over-regulation and minute administrative and financial control of higher education in the country is not working.
But expressing confidence in the quality of JAMB examinations, the minister said, “The universities should not be holding another examination (post-UTME). If JAMB is qualified enough to conduct tests, and they have conducted tests, then there will be no need to conduct another test for students to gain admission.” In truth, there are other notable points of contention by candidates and their parents against the post-UTME. They accuse the universities of exploiting admission seekers by the imposition of expensive scratch cards to raise funds. Of course, this is unacceptable. The adoption of technology should ease stress and ensure cheaper cost, not the charade being witnessed by universities who are milking candidates with excessive charges. Among other accusations, a House of Representatives resolution urged the ministry to discard the post-UTME because “it is subjective, stressful, exploitative … an aberration.”
But in its defence, the post-UTME was necessitated by the pervasive rot that marred the admission process. Candidates scored top marks in the JAMB examinations, but could not cope with the demands of higher education. A former pro-chancellor of the University of Lagos, Akoka, Afe Babalola, narrated the story of a candidate who scored 300 (out of 400) in the UTME, but was rejected at the post-UTME stage because he named the late Sani Abacha as the author of Things Fall Apart, a novel that was famously written by the late Chinua Achebe. It is also a misnomer in a federal system where higher education is on concurrent legislative list.
Globally, admission criteria are set by either the individual university as obtainable in the United States, co-regulated between an external authority or the university as in Sweden, or regulated entirely by an external authority as it is in Greece. But it has been proved that countries that grant their universities too little autonomy limit their performance and competitiveness. This explains why the European Union’s Prague Declaration (2009) presented 10 success factors for European universities in the next decade, which included autonomy: “Universities need strengthened autonomy to better serve society and specifically to ensure favourable regulatory frameworks, which allow university leaders to design internal structures efficiently, select and train staff, shape academic programmes and use financial resources, all of these in line with their specific institutional missions and profiles.” Most European countries are now allowing their universities to organise their own entry examinations.
Citing the distress and financial toll on candidates as the only reasons to abandon the post-UTME means the stakeholders do not appreciate the sanity it has infused into the system. University education is the bedrock of development. It is where technological innovations that improve humanity originate from.
The post-UTME cancellation should trigger a comprehensive review of the admission process in Nigeria. As we have said in previous editorials, the global best practice is to give autonomy to universities. JAMB should be voluntary. Each university should be given untrammelled autonomy to conduct its own admission process as is the case in the top universities in the world like Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Yale. In a federal polity, a single examination board should not be binding on the federating states. If there are abuses and exploitation in the post-UTME process, it should be reformed and abuses uprooted.
The idea of a centralised university admission authority is becoming outmoded in a knowledge-driven, competitive world. JAMB was decreed into existence by the military government in 1978 when there were just 13 federal universities. JAMB made sense then as a means of giving access to students from all parts of the country. This is no more the situation as universities now dot every state in the country. Currently, the National Universities Commission says there are 143 universities nationwide. Forty of these universities are owned by the Federal Government; 42 by state governments; and 61 are privately-owned. With this spread and number, JAMB has outlived its usefulness; it is clearly no more relevant. Even private secondary schools are conducting their own admission and it is working.
Universities should be free to administer their admission process. This is one of the basic principles and conditions which are important for universities if they are to fulfil optimally their missions and tasks. Apart from the fact that this is the ideal in a federal setting like Nigeria’s, considerable benefits and importance of university autonomy are lost when admission process is centralised.
Candidates who are protesting against the rigorous nature of admission to tertiary institutions should understand that the university is a place for serious-minded students. It is for the best, above-average students; not mediocre ones. The university is a place where the intellect, potential and determination will be sorely tested. No university worth its name will issue certificates to half-baked graduates. We encourage the universities to stick to their standards and admit only students that can cope with the demands of scholarship, dignity and excellence that are the hallmarks of the ivory tower. This is the way to go.
