ADMISSION CRITERIA IN NIGERIA: A NEED FOR CRITICAL EVALUATION

ADMISSION CRITERIA IN NIGERIA: A NEED FOR CRITICAL EVALUATION BY ESAN OLUWATOBI DAVID

Education has often been described as the key to success and the backbone of a successful society. Lack of education was said to be the pioneer cause of African colonialism and enslavement, this propelled a lot of African nations to thoroughly invest in the education sector after they gained their independence.

Although we cannot shy away from the basic fact that the percentage of allocation being awarded to the education sector now has reduced drastically and the first love for education is dwindling daily.

Taking a critical look at the cause of this dwindling one might say that, just has every business expect profit at the end of sales, the expected profit people get after being educated is not in commensuration with the effort and pressure people in recent times put on it, hence it makes education a loss business for people who quest after it.

The frustration of people for what they get after being educated has been summarized with this sarcasm “when we were young, we were told that education is the key to success, so we decided to purse that key so well, only to discover that the padlock has been changed after we got the key, which is education”

I will not dwell on the various challenges being faced by education in Nigeria today; rather I will pitch my tent with the new criteria for entering into tertiary institution today. The adoption of these new procedures started over a year ago, and it is impatient to bring out the implication of this process to our education system and the potentials of our dear nation.

It is no longer news that post UTME has been scrapped and the cumulative score of jamb and grade point of students O’Level results are the major yardstick for admission processing in Nigeria today.

Of a truth, this very system has its own advantages, ranging from improving the education standard of intakes into tertiary institutions which will to some extent stop the abnormalities involve in the process of post UTME ranging from bribery and Nepotism, it also help the sub-conscious mind of students to get more serious with their studies among other rare benefits.

Nevertheless, the system could not stop the exploitation of money from admission seekers as money is still been collected for screening just as in the days of paying for post UTME, so of what effect is the scrapping of post UTME?

More so, from the first year of its practice, we have seen a lot of students with very high score in both Jamb (above 300) and very good O’Level results (above 5 distinctions) not getting admitted, of course the competition it has brought to the system is great, but we must also be conscious that it will constantly relegate the best outside what they planned for and if care is not taken it will increase the rate of secondary school dropouts in the nation, as the competition will squeeze majority out, and if private institutions cannot be affordable for them, we risk losing great potentials to the street.

This system in coming years will increase pressure on student to want to achieve, and continuous pressure will lead to desperation among students, because even the very best are not been admitted in the best schools and if they will get admitted, they will have to settle for lesser schools who won’t have the capacity to build great quality in them. Consistent desperation among secondary school students just to attain A’s might in no time bring about a do or die educational system and increase the rate of examination Malpractice in the nation. Students will look for every means possible to get the desired distinctions needed for their proposed course.

More so, in coming years, we will find the very best students in the secondary schools fighting for places in the polytechnics and colleges of education due to the high standards that universities are demanding from students in their O’level. This will in turn lower the general standard of education in the nation. I am not saying setting very high standard is wrong, but we must be realistic and considerable in setting such standards. Students will prefer to run to institutions with lower standards and at the end will become products of mediocrity.

It is not a gain saying that most universities in the northern part of Nigeria has very lower standard with all due respect to them, compared to does in the west, now if the universities in the west set all distinctions as a criteria for gaining admission, someone with distinctions but could not meet up with the high standard of the universities in the west could go to the north to study the same course, at the end we produce graduate from the two institutions into the society. The difference is lucid, both students are excellent students but one process of learning is thorough than the order, but they will both end up in the society.

The same post UTME that was scrapped happens to be the basis for most people who are now dictating standard’s today life line for admission, how many of them can boost of having the set criteria for each course they studied today? How many doctors have 5 or 6 A’s at one sitting in their O’level, how many professors, directors, senators, policy makers among others, how many can boost of that? Can we have over 50% of them per discipline? They have also benefited from either using two sittings, having one or two A’s with mixture of B’s and credit, they have benefited from scoring above 200 in jamb and their post UTME result pave way for their admission not their O’level result. If it is by O’level result most of them will never have seen the four walls of tertiary institution today.

However, in a nation that is not given too much cognizance to sponsoring and supervising the education sector has before again, unpaid teachers’ salaries and other allowances happens to be the order of the day, from where does the teachers get motivation to impact such knowledge standards into their students, when they have even lose passion for the job, yet the education criteria and standard of acquiring higher knowledge keep increasing.

The underlining basis of the write up is to in treat the consciousness of tertiary institution on the implication of setting relatively too great a standard on the ground of maintaining a status quo, as it will in no time backfire on the society. If standards are getting too unrealistic for students to attain, human by nature will look for a substitute and an alternative, looking for a substitute is never the problem, but the quality of the substitute is the issue, which in no time will revolve round the society.

To the policy makers, it is a well known fact that change is a constant thing but if we have to change from an old way of doing things, the advantage of the new one should far out way the old one. On the issue of admission, the new policy should strive towards improving the standard and quality of tertiary institutions intake, but it should at the same time be annexed towards improving the level of literacy in the society.

If this new policy continues the way it is been done in its first year of inception, in no time we will either have great numbers of secondary school drop outs in the society or the society will be filled with a lot of educated illiterate or educated mediocre, either of the case it is bad for the nation.

I submit by saying that a critical evaluation be done on the new admission policy in Nigeria as another Jamb and secondary schools final examination approaches.

LIVING LEGEND 2017