JAMB releases admission cut-off marks

Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike

The Federal Government, in consultation with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, has pegged the cutoff marks for 2014 admissions into universities at 180, while polytechnics and colleges of education were put at 150, respectively.

The cutoff points were arrived at on Tuesday, after the 5th Combined Policy meeting on admissions to tertiary institutions, held at the National Universities Commission, Abuja.

 

The Supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, who declared the meeting open, frowned on the inability of most tertiary institutions to utilise their admission quota.

Wike, however, said in view of efforts to boost access, institutions which failed to utilise their admission quota for 2014 would be sanctioned. He reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to the development of ICT training, which he said, had already been inculcated into the standard curriculum at the secondary school level.

He said, “I have been briefed that despite the rising demand for higher education vis-a-vis the availability of a large number of qualified candidates, some institutions did not fully utilise the admissions quota approved for them by relevant regulatory agencies in 2013.

“This disservice to the Nigerian child is totally unacceptable. In line with efforts of the Federal Government to improve access, let me urge you all to with effect from today, work assiduously to ensure that all admission spaces in your institutions for the current year are fully utilised within the approved time frame.”

The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, in his presentation gave a statistical run down of candidates’ preference for tertiary education. He said after the conduct of the 2014 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, candidates who applied for degree awarding institutions totalled 1,584,348, representing 70 per cent; National Certificate in Education applicants totalled 25,767 representing 1.6 per cent; National Diploma, a paltry 22,072, representing 1.3 per cent while National Innovation Diploma had just 46, representing 0.003 per cent.

Ojerinde wondered why Nigeria’s educational system has consistently failed to embrace technical education in its quest for industrialisation, noting that the British system which Nigeria copied now award degree in all its polytechnics.