Tertiary institutions across the country, yesterday, declared that they could only admit 704,000 students out of more than 740,000 candidates who are qualified to be given admission for the 2013/2014 academic year having scored 200 and above.
Out of the 1,735,720 candidates that registered for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, 1,540,179 candidates had their results released as 738,375 candidates have already crossed the 200 marks bar, even as the results of the 36,000 candidates that wrote computer-based tests have not been made public.
This came as the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, and National Universities Commission, NUC, vowed to vet post-matriculation admissions.
The institutions also debated the cut-off mark for this year’s admission after a rowdy argument at the 4th Combined Policy Committee meeting held at NUC headquarters in Abuja.
Cut-off marks reviewed
They arrived at 180 for degree-awarding institutions, while the cut-off mark for non-degree awarding institutions was pegged at 150 from 160 to encourage candidates to opt for polytechnics and colleges of education.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, made the disclosures, yesterday, at the NUC headquarters, stressing that the admission capacity of tertiary institutions in the country had been raised to 704,000, from the initial 500,000.
Ojerinde said the board and NUC had to deal with the problem of admission of excess students for which the Federal Government was often pushed into a tight corner.
Admission deadline
He warned the institutions to stick to the deadline of October 31 for admission of students and cautioned that any student admitted outside the deadline would not graduate from the institutions.
He said: “I wish to remind you formally that all admissions will come to an end by October 31. All institutions are hereby called upon to adhere strictly to this date as late submissions will not be entertained.
“We have discovered that some universities and other institutions comply with admission deadline, while some others do not comply and up till date they are still admitting students.”
He said that the scores of 180 and 160 were adopted last year as cut-off point, but was thrown open for institutions to agree on before adoption in the 2013/2014 year.
However, the debate on the cut-off for this year generated heated argument, but the institutions unanimously agreed to peg the cut-off mark at 180 for universities and 150 for non-degree awarding institutions.
Reasons for
marks review
The institutions based their argument on the graph shown to them by JAMB, indicating that candidates preferred universities to polytechnics and colleges of education.
They argued that to encourage candidates to seek admissions in polytechnics and colleges of education, there was need to bring down the cut-off mark to 150 for non-degree awarding institutions.
Ojerinde reminded the institutions of the mandatory guidelines on admission, pegging criteria for merit at 45 percent, catchment, 35 and educationally less-developed states, ELDS, 20 for Federal Government-owned institutions.
For state-owned institutions, merit was put at 40 percent, catchment 40 and ELDS 20.
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