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 marksbar. The results of the 36,000 candidates that wrote
computer-based tests have notbeen 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'sadmission 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
oftertiary 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 admissionof 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 deadlinewould not graduate from the institutions.
"I wish to remind you formally that all admissions will come to an end
by October 31. All institutions arehereby 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.
For state-owned institutions, merit was put at 40 percent, catchment
40 and ELDS 20.