Institutions To Admit 704,000 Students As JAMB Sets Oct. 31 Admission Deadline

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.

1,735,720 candidates registered for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, out of which 1,540,179 candidates had their results released as 738,375 candidates have already crossed the 200 marks bar. 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.

At the end of the day, the committee agreed on 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.

According to Ojerinde, 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.

He also 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.

“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.”

Ojerinde also reminded the institutions of the mandatory guidelines on admission, pegging criteria for merit at 45 percent, catchment area, 35 and educationally less-developed states, ELDS, 20 for Federal Government-owned institutions.