The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said universities and other tertiary institutions are at liberty to go higher, but not lower on cut-off marks, depending on their peculiarities and the performance of candidates.
A statement signed by JAMB Head of Media, Dr Fabian Benjamin, reiterated that the national cut-off marks of 180 for universities and 150 for others institutions in the 2015 UTME was a bench mark to set the tone for 2015 admission exercise.
“The decision to have a national accepted cut-off mark at policy meeting was to serve as a guide and pruning mechanism to give the tertiary institutions qualitative and manageable candidates to choose from a pool of candidates desirous of tertiary education,” he said.
It would be recalled that some parents of candidates who applied to write the University of Lagos post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (post-UTME) last Wednesday protested against the decision of the institution to raise its cut-off marks to 250 as against the 180 marks fixed by JAMB.
Benjamin noted that no candidate would be denied any right to aspire to tertiary education even as it was aware that some universities had their own admission cut-off marks acceptable by the Board for courses they offered.
“The policy witnessed in University of Lagos is aimed at ensuring that our universities admit only the top best as done globally,” he added.
He said those candidates who did not meet the cut-off marks of such institutions would be placed in needy institutions within their geopolitical zone depending on available space in such institutions.