JAMB’s ridiculous cut-off mark
The news of the return of post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (post-UTME) was a great shock to university admission seekers and their parents. More shocking, however, is the cut-off mark that was reduced to 120 from the 180 marks that it used to be for universities.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board ( JAMB) declared last week Tuesday, August 22, 2017 that 120 would be the minimum marks required to make a candidate eligible for admission into any university in Nigeria. JAMB also announced that the minimum cut-off marks for admission into polytechnics and colleges of education shall be 100 marks, while innovative enterprise institutions had their cut-off marks fixed for 110 marks. These cut-off marks were disclosed by the JAMB Registrar, Professor Is-haq Oloyede, at the end of a policy meeting with authorities of Nigerian tertiary institutions.
Speaking further, Professor Oloyede said 569, 395 out of the 1.7 million candidates who wrote this year’s UTME scored over 200 marks, adding that 23.8 percent of the total number of candidates scored below 160 marks. A statistics of 23.8 percent, representing the total number of candidates who scored below 160 marks isn’t a reason strong enough to lower the cut-off mark. The 23.8 percent is a tolerable failure rate in any achievement test.
Defending the decision to reduce the cut-off mark, JAMB’s spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, said in a statement that admission quotas of higher institutions were sufficient to accommodate all qualified admission seekers because the institutions hardly fill their available spaces. This is not true as a recent report published by Daily Trust on Monday, August 28, 2017 shows that 74 percent of applicants do not secure admission.
Dr. Benjamin also said the cut-off was reduced because when it was 180, “institutions were going behind to admit candidates with far less scores”. This reason is illogical and therefore untenable to warrant a cut-off mark of 120. Rather, it portrays JAMB as legalizing the illegality perpetrated by universities in admitting unqualified candidates.
Reactions in the media have generally been critical of the bewildering cut-off mark since its announcement.The decision to lower the cut-off mark to 120 has several implications for the already dysfunctional system of education in the country. The immediate consequence of this shocking cut-off is that many academically dull candidates would gracefully and effortlessly secure admission, taking the place of some brilliant but “not connected” candidates especially when admission criterion is not on merit but on the basis of state quota or catchment area. Even the previous 180 cut-off score was below 200 that should have been the cut-off as minimum pass mark of 400 which is the total score obtainable in UTME. A cut-off of 120 which is mere 30 percent of 400 thus sounds incredible.
The worthless lowering of the cut-off mark will also put universities and other tertiary institutions under needless pressure. It is public knowledge, for instance, that even when the cut-off mark was 180, universities barely admitted 20 percent of candidates that annually apply to them for admission. With the cut-off mark inexcusably lowered to 120, more number of candidates would become eligible even though the limited admission quota in the institutions, yet, remains as it were, unchanged. This is a pointer to the chaotic situation which the 2017 admission process, particularly in public institutions, is likely to suffer.
On his part, Professor Oloyede said “the senate and academic boards of universities should be allowed to determine their cut-off marks”. For JAMB to create this perceived window of autonomy over cut-off mark, after having lowered it, makes the controversial cut-off score of 120 ridiculous. We call on JAMB to re-examine 120 as a cut-off mark for university admission. We suggest that it should be allowed to remain at 180 if it cannot be reviewed upward. This, among other reasons, is to preserve the credibility of UTME results in order to also revitalize Nigeria’s education system.