JAMB pegs Universities' cut-off marks at 180; Polytechnics and College of Educations at 150

The Federal Government in consultation with the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) and other stakeholders have pegged the cut-off marks for 2014 admissions into Universities at 180, while Polytechnics and Colleges of Education(COE)were placed at 150 respectively.

The cut off points were arrived at on Tuesday, after the 5th Combined Policy meeting on admissions to tertiary institutions held at the National Universities Commission.

Declaring the meeting open, the Supervising Minister of Education disclosed that the Federal Government is currently putting necessary structures in place to fully entrench computer literacy and Computer Based Test (CBT) at all level of Education in the country.

The minister disclosed that the Ministry has already made ICT training part of the standard curriculum at the secondary school level in order prepare all the youth in the country for global competitiveness.

He noted that JAMB's introduction of biometric data capture and verification coupled with Computer Based Test (CBT) are welcome innovations that have improved efficiency and further protected the integrity and credibility of its examination.

Wike frowned at the inability of most tertiary institutions to utilise their admission quota.

He therefore urged all the tertiary institutions in the country to ensure that all the admission spaces in their schools are adequately utilised.

The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB,Dibu Ojerinde in his presentation gave a statistical run down of candidates preference for tertiary education.

He said after the conduct of the 2014 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination(UTME) candidates who applied for degree awarding institutions or universities totalled 1,584,348 representing 97.070, NCE applicants totalled 25,767 representing 1.579, ND a patlry 22,072 representing 1.349 while NID had just 46 representing 0.003.

Ojerinde wondered why Nigeria's educational system has consistently failed to embrace technical education in its quest for industrialisation, saying the British which Nigeria copied the polytechnic education from now award degree in all its polytechnics.