UNIVERSITY PLACES: FEW CHEERS, MANY TEARS

DA DA IDO

DITV/ALHERI RADIO, KADUNA

NEWS ANALYSIS/COMMENTARY

16^TH November, 2011

UNIVERSITY PLACES: FEW CHEERS, MANY TEARS

          Many young Nigerians who sat for the University Matriculation Examinations are finding out if they have been offered admission in our universities and polytechnics. If they have secured places, they would be among the less than 10% of all those who have qualified to actually secure places. The 90% who sat the Senior Secondary Schools Examinations (S.S.C.E), N.E.C.O, G.C.Es, N.C.Es or Diplomas all to get places in the Universities will not get them. Many of those who would have qualified for places in our universities will not attend a Nigerian university. They will attend a university in a foreign country, at great cost to their parents or guardians or governments. Some will go to Ghana in their tens of thousands; or South Africa, or Malaysia, or the United Kingdom, or any of more than a dozen countries who are attracting hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians who pay astronomical fees to study there. The vast majority who will neither get places in Nigerian universities nor afford foreign ones may try again next year, or they may give up and try in any number of tertiary institutions, where the competition is just as fierce. Or they will just melt into the army of unemployed youth who are bitter at their country.

          Some of those who would have been offered admissions may have genuinely deserved their places, but majority of them would have been helped by a strong push from people with influence or money. Brilliant performance just isn’t enough in majority of the cases who make it. The limited number of places in relation to demand is only one explanation for this. Even when highly qualified candidates are considered, places may go to those who do worse than them because the system is severely compromised. The Nigerian student must be among the most examined in the world. At the end of secondary school, students sit S.S.C.E, U.M.E, N.E.C.O, G.C.E and Post-UME, all in a bid to secure enough scores to enter universities or polytechnics. Even very good performances in these examinations, all of which also cost a lot of money, is no guarantee that a student will be assessed only on that performance. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) could recommend a student to a university for admission, but the law gives universities power to admit. Universities do not trust JAMB’s examinations, so they set up their own examinations to verify the authenticity of JAMB’s standards. They make a lot of money from these examinations, which they then use as their own standards to decide who gets in. So the pressure moves from JAMB which shortlists and recommend candidates who meet cut-off points, to universities who conduct post-UME examinations, and who have to squeeze in a very limited number of students. The system is therefore prone to manipulation and subject to many influences. You have first, second and third admission lists; then V-C’s list, then Abuja’s lists in addition to the strong internal pressures from lecturers and other staff, Heads of Departments, Deans and Council members.

          The good candidate who has neither influence nor money will find it very difficult to squeeze through these many hindrances. Those who may make it through may include many who sat their examinations at miracle centres which guarantee excellent results for considerable sums of money which many parents willingly and knowingly pay. These miracle candidates will find places in universities without rigorous screening processes; or where places are sold outrightly. They may find many places available in private universities where premium is placed on the ability to pay extremely high fees, rather than entrance requirements. They may, or may not survive the demanding life of undergraduate studies, depending again on the moral and ethical environments in which they study. If they came in fraudulently, or with undeserved push, they will live by this fraud or subversion of standards by any means.

          Much of the Nigerian elite have long given up on the Nigerian university system. Long before other citizens knew it, they realized that Nigerian universities which gave them world-class education had become casualties of the spreading decay and corruption of our values and institutions. They know that our universities do not teach anything of value; are liable to close for any reason for months on end; and are likely to expose their children to evils such as cults, drugs and cheating around every hurdle. So they send their children out to neighbouring African countries, or to other lands whose value systems often rob the young Nigerians of the value of education they acquire. They spend more money on educating their children than would have been required to rehabilitate and maintain twenty world-class universities in Nigeria. They blame the government for the collapse of the education system; yet they are the government, or the people who run the government; or who make their wealth from the government. The further they and their children move away from the education system, the worse it gets.

          At the end of each 6-year senior secondary school circle, four groups of young Nigerians emerge. The first would graduate from secondary school with nothing. No grades, no skills, no hope, no future. This will be the group that attended government schools with little or no teaching. The second group will scrape and beg its way into the lower rungs of our tertiary system with poor grades, and they will graduate from there with barely a difference from when they entered. They may join the ranks of the unemployed or unemployable. If they do get employed, they will contribute to the alarming decline in all standards of our national life. A third group will be young Nigerians who studied hard, got good grades, but lack the influence or money to find places in universities or polytechnics.  They may see many of their friends and peers who performed worse than them secure places. They will be bitter, and each will be a living testimony that this nation cannot honour the most basic undertaking to its young and future leaders; which is that it will reward hard work and honesty. The final group will be made up of those who find places in universities and polytechnics because they deserve them; and those who buy them or use other influences to get them. This group will also include many children of the wealthy and the privileged who will not study in Nigerian universities; who will travel out and acquire quality education at great cost to their parents;  and who will come back and live in a nation declining literally by the day because it has abandoned the education of its young, and the development of its human capital.

          The few young Nigerians among millions who will find places in universities and other tertiary institutions will be the lucky ones. Many among them would not be there if standards and guidelines for admission are strictly followed. They will meet other students who are studying without certainty that their degrees will mean much in a shrinking economy; and who are studying in an environment which is more liable to corrupt their morality than if they stayed at home. The crises around admissions into our institutions of higher learning are only the tip of the iceberg in a sector which has very little value in terms of the nation’s capacity to develop. If Nigerians want to stop the descent into anarchy and irrelevance, our leadership must take some radical steps to rebuild our education system. A useful starting point will be for leaders to accept not to send their children or wards to foreign or private schools so long as they hold position of leadership.