JAMB Now Promotes Private Universities

The Joint Admissions Matriculation Board’s new moves to accommodate more candidates in the current admission process to universities may end up excluding them, According to Punch reports;

For the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, the decision to, on Thursday, reassign the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination candidates for the post-UTME is the way out of the ongoing crisis surrounding the 2015/ 2016 university admission exercise.

According to the board, the exercise will enable it to reassign candidates who do not meet the cut-off marks of their first choice institutions to other needy institutions. The idea, it adds, will assist the reassigned candidates to have better chances of securing admission to the citadels of learning.

The board, in a statement by its Head of Media, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, declares, “The decision of JAMB on the print-out for this year’s exercise is done in good faith, not to jeopardise the rights of candidates due to individual cut-offs set by some Nigerian tertiary institutions.

“Those candidates who do not meet the cut-off marks of such institutions will be placed in needy institutions within their geopolitical zones, depending on the available space in such institutions. The aim is to accommodate as many candidates as possible, instead of just pushing them to schools we know, abinitio, do not have the carrying capacity to admit all.”

But this “gospel” according JAMB is akin to tales by moonlight, many stakeholders posit. For this school of thought, there is more to this policy than meets the eye. In fact, the new approach by JAMB, for them, attracts more questions than answers. Does JAMB have the mandate to reassign candidates to other universities without their knowledge? Will candidates sit for their first choice of courses in the new arrangement? Is JAMB a salesman for needy universities? Who will pay for indigent students posted to private or state universities normally associated with high tuition? These and many more are some of the questions bothering many concerned parents and students.