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.
