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The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has given notice of its intention to stop the use of remedial and pre-degree programmes for direct admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in the country, from next year.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has given notice of its intention to stop the use of remedial and pre-degree programmes for direct admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in the country, from next year.
The Registrar of JAMB, Professor Adedibu Ojerinde, who revealed the plan during his formal announcement of the results of the Monotechnics, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education (MPCE) matriculation examinations, said the remedial programmes were responsible for the declining enrolment for the MPCE matriculation examinations because prospective candidates were cashing in on the pre-degree and remedial programmes to gain admission into higher institutions without sitting for JAMB examinations.
From 2008, the Registrar said such pre-degree and remedial programmes will only serve as added advantages as such students will still have to sit for JAMB to be offered admission. He added that the decision was taken to prevent examination fraud and protect the integrity of the admission process.
We commend JAMB for its interest in protecting the integrity of the process of admission into tertiary institutions. A situation in which persons who lack the required Ordinary Level qualifications are being smuggled into higher institutions through questionable remedial programmes, is unacceptable.
We concede that the Board has a responsibility to ensure that only candidates who have the required O Level qualifications are admitted into higher institutions. We must, however, point out that JAMB is not exactly correct in its supposition that pre-degree and remedial programmes are only undertaken by students who are deficient in their minimum O Level qualifications.
The reality is that many students in pre-degree programmes in many universities have the required minimum O level qualifications and have passed JAMB examinations but were unable to secure admission for various reasons ranging from the contentious quota system, the very high cut-off marks for certain courses because of the stiff competition for limited places in their preferred courses and the growing lack of confidence in JAMB to score and release results, owing to the frequent cases of withheld results over unproven examination malpractices. A study of the admission records of students in many pre-degree programmes will show that many already have the full O level requirements for their chosen courses even as is required of students who are admitted through the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) and the MPCE.
While we sympathise with JAMB over the increasing loss of interest in its MPCE examination, the board will admit that many factors have been adduced for the growing disinterest in polytechnic education in Nigeria. Key among these is the discrimination against polytechnic and colleges of education graduates in favour of university graduates in relation to employment and promotion, even until recently, in the public service.
The task before the Federal Government should be to adequately fund and make polytechnic education more attractive to our youths. The discrimination against polytechnic and colleges of education graduates should be addressed.
The way to increase polytechnic enrolment should not be by unduly restricting access to universities. What is required of JAMB is for it to ensure that everyone who is to be admitted into higher institutions has the required O level qualifications.
Giving the growing irrelevance of JAMB as attested to by universities' insistence on, and greater respect for, scores in the post-UME examinations, the Board should not insist that the UME must be the only narrow route to admission into higher institutions. What it should insist on is that only candidates with the mandatory O'Level credits are admitted into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education either through the pre-degree or remedial programmes that must be regularized with JAMB or its UME and MPCE examinations.