The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB has released new cut-off marks for tertiary institutions. According to news monitored through the Premium Times, the institutions are however said to be at liberty to raise their cut off marks above JAMB’s requirement.
According to the news source, the cut-off mark for universities was put at 120 while that of polytechnics was pegged at 100. The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has released the cut-off marks for Nigerian tertiary institutions while also lifting the ban for post UTME examination. It was gathered that the decisions over new cut off marks was taken at the 2017 Combined Policy Meetings on Admissions into Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria which ended on Tuesday, August 22.
At the end of the meeting, a minimum cut-off marks for tertiary institutions were given as – Universities, pegged at 120; Polytechnics and colleges of education, pegged at 100 while innovative enterprising institutes was pegged at 110.
The institutions were however allowed to raise their cut-off marks above JAMB’s stipulation. It was also agreed that admissions into public degree awarding institutions for the 2017 UTME examination will end on January 15, 2018 while private institutions will end theirs on January 31, 2018. It was also revealed that decisions on first choice candidates by universities will be expected to be complete by October 15 and second choice candidates will end on December 15. The rest of the students seeking admission will be available for other institutions till the January closing dates.
Prof Is’haq Oloyede who is the registrar of JAMB said that a Central Admission Processing System (CAPS) will be used to streamline admission processes among institutions based on challenges associated with the former approach. He said: “All over the world, there is agitation for dynamic educational policy,” he said. “JAMB only admits for National Diploma, not Higher National Diploma; so why should we use the same requirement for ND and B.Sc, that is unreasonable parity. “We should not be sentimental in fixing our cut off mark; we need not over-dramatise issue of cut off mark.” He noted that the number of those seeking admission to study agriculture had dropped while those for medicine and health science rose. He also spoke about illegal admissions saying the new process allows the registrar to approve all candidates. “About 17,160 students were admitted without JAMB across institutions in Nigeria,” he added. Earlier the news had been broken that the post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (post-UTME) conducted for candidates seeking admission into higher institution was scrapped by the Federal Government. The Federal Government explained that all tertiary institutions were at liberty to conduct screening for candidates seeking admission into any school.
