Disturbing statistics
At the matriculation ceremonies of each of our public universities, where new students are admitted into status pupillary, we are told of harrowing statistics of the number of students who did not gain admission even though they were otherwise qualified to have been admitted. This year was no exception and it appears that half of all the qualified applicants to our public universities could not be admitted for one reason or another.
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However, as we bemoan the limited admissions, most of us are not aware that some of the students would be counted as many times as they bought application forms of the various universities. Our universities have a common foreign office in London, overseeing their activities and depending on whose turn it is to provide the registrar for the London office, an officer from that institution is posted there to work for all of them.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to adopt the system of joint admission, as is practised in other jurisdictions, with a Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), supervising the process of admissions into the appropriate institution. This is where the statistics becomes muddied since the real situation of how many students qualified and were admitted to the public universities is never established.
There are some of the candidates whose names would appear on the admission lists of all the public universities for as long as they filled application forms of those institutions. There are some who would register for one institution but would never be a student of that institution as they leave for another university depending on how far their choice subjects are offered to them.
It is my humble and considered opinion that if we want to have realistic data about qualified applicants for public sector university admission, then we have to set up a JAMB where all applications for admission into any of our public universities will apply. If we are able to place junior high school students into senior high school after the results of the Basic Education Certificate Examination are released, then it should not be difficult for a JAMB to select students to fill vacancies in our public universities.
That would even make for standard admission regulations for all the universities, so that they will have common entry requirements. Our public universities must learn to centralise their admissions such that applicants will have the luxury of buying a single form but have the opportunity of selecting all of the universities in order of preference depending on the programmes available at any given time.
Somebody has noted that, “statistics are like bikinis, what they conceal are far more important than what they reveal.” Yes, the data on individual institutional admissions might be playing a role to tell us what we need to do to expand facilities at each of the institutions. However, that is not the most functional means to determine the number of qualified applicants who gain admission or do not gain admission into our universities.
The JAMB for our universities could mark the beginning of collecting verifiable and valid data on qualifications to the public universities. That process will equally eliminate the current situation where even some among the few who are admitted do not turn up because they prefer one institution to another. It may equally sometimes be too late to replace those who do not show up. Indeed, some of the vacancies might never be detected since some of them register and start lectures at one institution until they luckily get their preferred subjects or courses at another university and leave for the new place.
We do not have the requisite facilities to admit as many of the qualified applicants as possible and, therefore, nothing must be done to render redundant any of the vacancies that will be filled. We have to make maximum use of the vacancies to ensure efficiency in university admissions. It should be possible to extend the process to our public polytechnics, teacher training colleges and nursing training colleges, as a sure way of promoting efficiency and effectiveness in educational admissions at all levels.
While the JAMB might deny some public universities income from the sale of admission forms, applicants would be relieved of the huge burden they bear from buying different forms for fear they might not gain admission or as an insurance to guarantee them admission at all cost if even they fail to qualify for a preferred course or programme in any of the institutions.
This is where the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals of our public universities must take the bold initiative with a JAMB.