The Management of the University of Ibadan (UI) wishes to inform the public about the recently announced cut off marks of 120 for University Admission that UI will not lower her standards.
A statement from the Vice Chancellor’s office indicates that Nigeria’s premier university still maintains her position in academic excellence and standards in order to continue to aspire towards becoming a world-class university.
It should worry us as patriots that candidates who scored just 30% in UTME can be admitted into some of our universities. Yet, we complain of poor quality of our graduates. You can hardly build something on nothing. The consolation here is that since JAMB started conducting this qualifying exam in 1978, UI has never admitted any candidate who scored less than 200 marks out of the maximum 400 marks.
This translates to a minimum of 50%. This remains our position as an institution aspiring to be world -class. Reality is that only about four other universities in the country have such high standard. To that extent, apart from being the oldest, we are an elite university in the country, at least judging by the quality of our intakes.
In fairness to the Registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, he repeatedly stressed at the Combined Policy Meeting held Tuesday, 22 August 2017 that the Senate of each university still has wide powers for admission in the spirit of autonomy. It is also gratifying to note that the Honourable Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who chaired the meeting, apologised publicly for canceling Post UTME Screening last year.
In effect, universities are now allowed to conduct Post-UTME test, using modalities approved by the Senate of each institution. To be fair to the incumbent Registrar of JAMB, he was not the Registrar when the policy somersault of cancelling POST UTME test was made last year. Prof Oloyede’s appointment was effective 1 August 2016, while the Policy Meeting for that year had held some two months earlier.
As strongly canvassed by us at every opportunity, for UI, the need to admit the best admission seekers is the primary motivation for POST UTME test and not money, even though we do not pretend that you can run any university so properly called without funds.
*Prof Idowu Olayinka – VC, University of Ibadan.
