JAMB Says Private Varsities Admit 19,254 as against 67,009 in 2013


JAMB Says Private Varsities Admit 19,254 as against 67,009 in 2013:

The Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) said on Tuesday that private universities admitted 19,254 candidates as against 67,009 allotted quota in 2013.

Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, Registrar of JAMB, said this at a meeting with the Committee of Vice Chancellors (CVC) and Registrars of Private Universities.

Ojerinde said the figure represented 29 of the 48 per cent of the private universities in the country.

“The statistics of admission into private universities for 2013 admission does not reflect a good performance of this group of institutions in terms of ratio of admissions to allotted quota.

“Many of the private universities which have been allotted considerable number of quota per session have not been able to fill the spaces.

“That is, only six of the 48 private universities in the country  were able to admit up to 50 per cent of the quota allotted to them.”

Ojerinde said the board was making efforts to boost admissions into the private universities in 2014.

He said this would be done by giving special concession to candidates with minimum aggregate score of 170 to be admitted into the institutions.

He said that the board, on its part, would continue to partner with the private universities in their efforts to contribute to the development of education in the country.

Prof Julius Okojie, Executive Secretary, National Universities  Commission (NUC), said that NUC only determined the total carrying capacity of a university as well as staff and students ratio for programmes.

Okojie said the senate of the university, on its part, worked out how many students the university could accommodate based on its staff strength.

“After determining the total annual carrying capacity of the universities, the commission will then send to JAMB for admission into each of the universities.’’

He said it was unfortunate that universities violated the recommended carrying capacities as well as staff and students ratio, thereby resulting in the overstretching of facilities and infrastructure.

Also, Prof Micheal Faborode, General-Secretary of CVC, said that the meeting became imperative due to many accreditation bodies which were competing with NUC in accreditation of university programmes.

He said there was a need for all the bodies to come together, to resolve issues becoming burdens to university education in the country.

“The essence of bringing different associations together is for them to come and understand why it is possible to have harmonised system with the NUC.

“This is to ensure that when they are going for a particular course accreditation, the respective professional associations are carried along for proper accreditation of university prgrammes.’’

Faborode said that the meeting was important to educate the universities on why they should join the Nigerian Educational Research Network for proper school research programme
Mr Kamila Maliki, Registrar, Council on the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) gave assurance that it would verify any engineering programme in universities before its commencement.

Maliki stressed that running engineering programmes in universities without accreditation by the council was illegal and contravened the Act that established COREN.

“Let it be known that products of any unaccredited programme will never be registered, even if the programme is eventually accredited, ‘’ he said. (NAN)