UTME: As 1.7m candidates jostle for 850,000 admission slots....

This Saturday, the more than 1.8 million candidates who registered for the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) will jostle for about 850,000 admission spaces. At the end of the admission process, about 950,000 admission seekers will be left out.

Sadly, while the number of UTME candidates increases every year, the Federal Ministry of Education is virtually doing nothing in terms of  upgrading the carrying capacity of the existing universities or building more universities to absorb the backlog of admission applicants.

This would have made it impossible for candidates who applied for admission and scored 250, to be denied admission.

Disqualification of many applicants

As it stands, even if all the candidates score 300 and above, because of the limited spaces, JAMB and various institutions will still have to devise a means to disqualify many applicants.

Statistics reveal that while candidates who registered for the UTME rose from 1.5 million to 1.8 million within three years, admission spaces have remained static.

The only increment in admission spaces were derived from the private universities and few state universities. Of course, many students and parents are unwilling to patronise private universities due to its financial implications and other individual considerations.

JAMB’s annual examination data reveals that in the past five years, the average number of candidates that registered for the UTME is 1.5 million, just as the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education combined have 700,000 spaces.

Therefore, while the Federal Government considers approval of more universities as a solution to the yearly admission deficits, many stakeholders are urging it to concentrate more on expanding the existing universities and also encourage students to seek other options for tertiary education.