The Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, has identified special preference for the university education as one of the reasons why students are not gaining admissions, many years after writing the matriculation examinations.
Ojerinde stated this while delivering a lecture at the second Matriculation ceremony at the Wesley University of Technology, Ondo.
He wondered why students and parents are expressing of strong desire for admission to particular courses and tertiary institutions.
He said the “university syndrome” where every candidate prefers to go to university instead of polytechnics and colleges of education had made many of the students to write the exams for many years.
He also lamented the rating of some courses as more important than others and the impression that some institutions as better than some others, as part of the reasons why the students write JAMB on annual basis.
He condemned the overbearing parent’s influence on their wards to choose particular courses notwithstanding their potential and intellectual abilities.
Ojerinde said the inability of an institution to accommodate beyond admission quota allotted to its departments and the limitation in number of candidates (carrying capacity) that tertiary institution can admit in each academic session, also compounds the admission problems or candidates.
The registrar also said that the Post-UTME saga and re-rating of candidates on tests that lack standard and raise issues of public concern was also inhibiting the chances of many applicants from securing admissions.
He also said that failure to obtain cut-off scores set by institutions for different courses and sitting for wrong subject combination during the UME or Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, was also affecting admissions to universities.
He said that in Nigeria, just like the United Kingdom and South-Africa, examinations such as the UTME, have only one year life spam on syllabus and not aptitudinal competence.
This, he added, implied that changes in contents of subject, syllabus and testing of such subjects in two or more years do not allow for the use of results for more than one year.
He said, “It is only when aptitudinal abilities of the examinees are assessed that the results of exercises could be useable for more than one year.
“In addition, difficulty levels of subjects assessed yearly are not the same and scores released yearly are scores unique to the spread of performances in each year.
“Therefore, scores in two or more years may not necessarily be the same.The task of constructing and administering aptitude test in a selection examination is quite enormous and challenging.
“However, as usual, JAMB is equal to the task given all the necessary supports from the governments and stakeholders.”
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