Crises are an inevitable part of admission processes into universities because the number of matriculants passing the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) heavily supersedes the number of available spaces at the universities, the Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, has said.
He said only 30 per cent of the 1.7 million UTME candidates have valid spaces in the 153 universities in the country this session.
He made the remarks on Tuesday at a Senate public hearing on the ‘perceived regulatory conflicts between the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and universities in offering admissions,’ in Abuja.
He said unless more universities or first-year places were created at the universities, admission crises were inescapable.
He said universities must conduct post-UTME to be able select candidates from thousands of admission seekers that passed the UTME.
“We respect JAMB exams but it will be difficult to conduct admission into some programmes using the UTME.”
He said about 4,000 candidates who applied to study medicine at a certain university with only 100 spaces had obtained more than the required marks in their UTME.
He added that some courses such as physics, history and mathematics have fewer applicants and may not necessarily require post-UTME.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund, Sen. Jibrin Barau said the essence of the hearing was to simplify admission processes into tertiary institutions.
JAMB Registrar Prof Oloyede said there was no conflict between the board and higher institutions.
He stated not all the 1.7 million candidates that wrote UTME this year were qualified for admission into universities because many of them haven’t gotten the results of school certificate exams. He said until a candidate gets credits in five subjects, he can’t secure admission.
