JAMB’s cancellation of cut off marks for tertiary institutions: Has anything changed?

Bankole Taiwo, Abeokuta

Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) under the leadership of Prof Ishiaq Oloyede, according to news reports, last week Tuesday at its virtual policy meeting said that tertiary institutions were now set to determine their cut off marks.

The meeting was reportedly chaired by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu.

Prior to this announcement, JAMB which has the constitutional mandate to conduct admission examinations for students into Colleges of Education, polytechnics and the universities usually announce a particular cut off mark as the benchmark for which the students seeking admission into tertiary institutions were picked.

Though, it was gathered that while some institutions especially in the education less advantage part of the country such as in the north do follow this cut off marks and even lowered it as basis for admitting their students many tertiary institutions in the south hardly stick to this cut off marks because of pronounced competitiveness.

Speaking on the recent decision of the JAMB to stop pronouncing cut off marks for admission of students into tertiary institutions, Mr Tokunbo Akanbi, an educationist said that “I don’t think anything has changed because even in the past when JAMB will say this is our cut off marks for the students seeking admission into tertiary institutions this year, I think substantially, the institutions that usually go by this cut off marks are those in the north, the educationally less advantage areas and may be few ones in the south, especially the private universities.

“If JAMB for instance pegged the cut off mark for say 180, due to competitiveness among others, Unilag may say mine is 220, OAU can say ours is 210 because of the large number of prospective students who want to come to this school but the space is not there. In any case, the laws empower the universities to determine their cut off marks and this many of them have been doing without necessarily going by whatever JAMB says is their cut off mark. My only fear is that some institutions might resolve to lowering the standards thinking that the ball is now in their courts.”

Speaking on the subject matter, Dr Dele Odunlami, the Head of Mass Communication department, Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) Ago Iwoye said, “the point is that individual universities started getting disenchanted with JAMB years back and started organising their Post-UTME when they felt that JAMB has been infiltrated with people who were just awarding marks to the students depending on who could foot the bill, these students only paraded huge scores without a corresponding academic performance. The university lost the confidence in JAMB and started organising the Post-UTME to checkmate this perceived abuse from JAMB.

“However, given the leadership in JAMB now, there’s no doubting the fact that some kind of sanitisation has been done but the fact still remains that statutorily, each university senate which is the highest decision making body in the university has been empowered constitutionally to determine the entry qualifications for their prospective students.

“JAMB is just to conduct the admission exam and provide the scores for the university to determine their cut off marks depending on the competition, that is, the forces of demand and supply, the admission request of all universities differ depending on the status of the universities, pedigree, allocation, the courses they offer and all that.

“The university also has the carriage capacity as determined by the National University Commission (NUC) that is, the number of students that it can admit at a time, for instance it could be 3,000, and it is this 3,000 that will now be spread among all the courses the university offers, all these are now looked at in addition with the scores of the students from JAMB to determine the cut off marks.

“In actual fact, what JAMB has been doing in the past after the conduct of the exam is for example to announce that the passmark for this year is 180 for public universities and 170 for private universities, but some universities will go ahead and say ours is 220, and the likes, so the recommendation from JAMB in the past is to say this is the least score which means that the university still have the power to determine what they want.

“I think what JAMB has done now is to return the power to the individual university to determine what they want. So what the university will now be employing is called law of averaging combining JAMB scores and the one conducted by the university, the Post-UTME and then arrive at the cut off.

“The JAMB and NUC have also come out with admission policies devoting 40% to merit, meaning that all these ones are given admission based purely on merit irrespective of wherever they come from. After this comes the 35% which is for catchment area, that is the environment where the university is operating and this also done with reference to performance and 25% is for discretionary, these are list from Governors, traditional rulers in all of these it is still performance of the students that is the key.

“What we observed is that the quality of the students have been rising since the universities have been organising Post-UTME. When you subject admission to transparent template like this we have trainable students who will not turn themselves to liabilities on the university joining cultism and involving in other anti-social vices and giving a lot of problem to the university.”

Dr Odunlami disclosed further that this is however not to say that JAMB has outlived its usefulness but should still be allowed to conduct the admission exams for the universities that will now blend such results with their specific demands and vision and use such scores as one of the inputs to objectively arrive at their entry qualifications.

Speaking with our Correspondent, Prof Olufunsho Olajuyigbe with Babcock University, Ilisan Remo said that much as he applauds the move by JAMB, the National University Commission (NUC) must intensify its monitoring to ensure that some institutions, especially privately owned looking for students at all cost would not bastardise the policy with poor students intake.

Prof Olajuyigbe said “as far as Babcock University is concerned, it’s indeed a privately owned university by the Adventist Church and will never sacrifice quality on the altar of pecuniary gains but there are other universities looking hungrily for money and would not bat an eyelid, they will think that they can do whatever they like. It is on this note that I sincerely pray that NUC will ensure that standards are not lowered with poor students intake.”

Comr. Kehinde Damilola Simeon, the Chairman of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) Ogun State in an interview with our Correspondent said that the decision of the JAMB should be handled cautiously.

Comr. Kehinde Damilola said, “We already have an ugly situation as many of these students don’t want to read anymore, the coming of social media is really affecting our students making them to concentrate less on their studies. With this JAMB’s decision to allow our schools to determine the admission cut off.

“I just hope it won’t encourage the students to grow more lazy. I will only plead with our schools not to lower the standards and ensure that their cut off marks are competitive, such that the admission are given to the students who work for it. The whole thing should be handled in such a way that the reputation of our institutions are not damaged.”