₦airaland Forum

IT is laughable that in a world driven by globally competitive academic standards, admissions to Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions remain mired in ingrained mediocrity and declining standards.

At the 2025 Policy Meeting on Admissions held in Abuja, key stakeholders, including the Minister of Education, JAMB authorities, vice-chancellors, and heads of tertiary institutions, approved a tolerable minimum admissions mark of 150 for universities, 140 for nursing schools, and 100 for polytechnics and colleges of education.

This is a slight increase from 2024, when the university threshold was set at 140.

While some VCs advocated for 140, Tunji Alausa and Ishaq Oloyede pushed for 160. Yet, all these marks remain far too low for university admissions.


These outcomes, in an exam where the maximum obtainable score is 400, mock institutions that are not only strategic to Nigeria’s development but also key players in a globalised academic space.

Mediocrity has no place in academia, and Nigeria cannot normalise this aberration.


Historically, policy meetings on admissions have set tolerable marks that fluctuated but were generally higher. Over the past decade, the highest approved mark was 180 in 2016.

The thresholds since then have varied: 120 in 2017 for universities, 160 in 2019 and 2021, and mostly 140 marks from 2022 to 2024.

Despite these variations, a significant majority of candidates consistently score below 200 out of 400: 64.24 per cent in 2016, rising to 87.2 per cent in 2021, and hovering around 76-79 per cent in recent years.

This persistent mediocrity starkly contrasts with the competitive admissions standards of previous decades, up to the 1980s, when students demonstrated strong performance, and university admissions were fiercely competitive.

It diverges sharply from standards in other countries. In the United Kingdom, university admissions are reserved for candidates with strong academic records, typically demonstrated through A-Levels, the International Baccalaureate, or equivalent qualifications.

At JAMB’s inception, only candidates scoring above 200 were listed for admissions.

Amidst this decline, a few Nigerian institutions still insist on a 200+ mark for admissions, which is commendable but still leaves room for improvement.

In the United States, university entry requires a high school diploma or equivalent with a strong academic record, often a GPA of 2.5 to 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.


The current policy meetings on admissions conflict with the principle of university autonomy.

Stakeholders in Nigeria’s higher education sector seem driven by the mistaken belief that access is the essence of university education, leading them to approve low tolerable marks.

The tail should not wag the dog. University education must be driven by excellence. It is better to leave some universities with fewer students than to flood them with half-baked and unemployable graduates.

Government policies have exacerbated this problem by creating overdependence on certificates. The neglect of technical and vocational education, alongside the failure to make polytechnics and colleges of education attractive as providers of middle-level manpower, has placed undue pressure on universities.


Urgent efforts are needed to create opportunities for candidates to find spaces in institutions that can develop their talents, skills, and competencies. This requires recalibrating education and reward systems to emphasise performance and value addition over mere certificate acquisition.

One paradox of the current system is that some private universities admit students with marks as low as 120, yet graduate many in the First Class category. Universities must uphold the ethos of academic excellence.

Since its founding in 1978, JAMB has promoted policies such as “catchment area” and distinctions between “educationally advantaged” and “disadvantaged” candidates rather than pure merit. Consequently, candidates from certain regions with scores of 250 have been denied admission, while those from others with as low as 170 were admitted.


This politicisation of educational excellence must end. In a competitive global environment, merit must govern tertiary education admissions.

Nigeria currently has 297 universities, comprising federal, state, and private with each state having at least one, and some states hosting multiple universities, polytechnics, and CoEs. Given this, the lopsided admissions challenge that JAMB was created to solve should now be manageable.

Higher institutions should be empowered to manage their admissions and other affairs independently so they can breathe and compete globally.

The government’s overbearing influence on education, under the guise of ownership and funding, is compromising and stifling progress. This has led to endemic challenges, including poor policies, lack of institutional autonomy, inadequate funding, insufficient infrastructure, unpaid salaries, and frequent strikes.

Sadly, many heads of tertiary institutions prioritise access over merit, often leading the charge in lowering tolerable admission marks just to fill seats.

Overreliance on tuition fees is another major concern. Globally, universities attract funding through grants, endowments, corporate partnerships, research patents, alumni support, and more, not just school fees.

Universities are citadels of excellence that draw from the best candidates to serve all sectors of society. There is a direct link between the quality of tertiary education and national development. Nigeria must embrace this principle.


Currently, candidates lack the academic rigour that drives performance and competition. Instead of using academic apps to complement learning, some students misuse them to cheat.

In the 2025 UTME, 80 candidates, including a blind candidate who hired a fellow blind person to impersonate him, were reportedly under police investigation for examination misconduct.

Revitalising Nigeria’s higher education standards is imperative, given its strategic role as the merchant of knowledge. This requires a paradigm shift among all stakeholders complicit in the education rot. The country must raise its standards.

The government should be deliberate in funding education and instituting policies that uphold standards and institutional autonomy, allowing higher institutions to compete globally. It should refrain from interfering in student admissions.

Government policies must be complementary, not counterproductive. For instance, establishing NELFUND to provide loans for a handful of students as a replacement for TETFund, the main infrastructure funding agency for higher institutions, reflects confusion and laxity.

Instead, the government should seek additional funding avenues to complement TETFund and invest more in tertiary education infrastructure.

Moreover, Nigeria must move beyond the paltry 5-8 per cent of budget allocation to education and implement, for example, and return to the defunct Western Region dictate of 35 per cent under Obafemi Awolowo.

Stakeholders must unite to eradicate mediocrity in higher institutions, making them globally competitive and nationally productive.

iykenex:
he cut off mark to me is ok, those with low score don't apply for professional courses, they are the ones that study unpopular courses while the ones with high score go for popular ones by so doing the ecosystem of education is balanced

FreeStuffsNG:
One paradox of the current system is that some private universities admit students with marks as low as 120, yet graduate many in the First Class category. Universities must uphold the ethos of academic excellence.

Nigeria Employers should blacklist all the glorified secondary schools with admissions cut off point of less than 200 and deny their products from being employed with their low quality certificates.

All foreign embassies should keep a list of these mediocre schools as well and impose a vetting process before certificates from these schools are presented for further studies in their foreign countries.

Except this is done, these mediocrity will not stop. If FG wants to keep giving university admission to candidates who fall JAMB then FG , states and private institutions that admitted them can keep hiring them.

If anyone had told me that a day will come when someone who failed woefully in JAMB will be rewarded with university admission, I would never have believed it.

This madness has got to stop. University education should be strictly for those willing to study hard to pass university entrance exam.

Education rights group should sue JAMB, FG, States and all the wacky schools to court to stop this destruction of our university system.

mayorall:
All this big grammar on JAMB exam students are not supposed to write?

Sam Adeyemi said our country has a taste for suffering and this seems true.

It's ambiguous for young stars to struggle to write Waec, Jamb and post utme. Many developed nations don't write all this. It's a one off high school exam and that's the only required entrance to enter top universities in the world. These were brains that produced several scientific inventors, IT and pharmaceutical giants.

Both Jamb and post utme interview should be scrapped.

blesdman:
The issue is not in the admissions but in the trainings while in institutions. A bloody waste of time and resources. No practical work related trainings but an almagamation of useless theories to the work environment

FreeStuffsNG:
Smh. If you don’t start from recruitment, how is it now then a university?

For any training institution, Quality starts from the mode adopted for selection of students. If you put garbage in, you will push garbage out.

How on earth can you even compare the quality of training in a university that recruits quality student with one admitting the bottom of the class? It's like comparing quality of students in a school that admits students with high JAMB score and a single o level result sitting like University of Lagos (UNILAG) with students in schools like unical that admit JAMB candidates with JAMB score of 145 and more than one o level sittings. You'll be comparing day to night niyen nah.

I am sure that you benefited from mediocre students admission and that's why you think our universities should be punished with lazy olodo students. Smh.

If a student is failing basic chemistry and biology, how on earth can he or she now understand the complex world of kinematics, advanced organic chemistry and biochemistry?

Will the university break the students' heads and pack it inside their heads?

FreeStuffsNG:
One paradox of the current system is that some private universities admit students with marks as low as 120, yet graduate many in the First Class category. Universities must uphold the ethos of academic excellence.

Nigeria Employers should blacklist all the glorified secondary schools with admissions cut off point of less than 200 and deny their products from being employed with their low quality certificates.

All foreign embassies should keep a list of these mediocre schools as well and impose a vetting process before certificates from these schools are presented for further studies in their foreign countries.

Except this is done, these mediocrity will not stop. If FG wants to keep giving university admission to candidates who fall JAMB then FG , states and private institutions that admitted them can keep hiring them.

If anyone had told me that a day will come when someone who failed woefully in JAMB will be rewarded with university admission, I would never have believed it.

This madness has got to stop. University education should be strictly for those willing to study hard to pass university entrance exam.

Education rights group should sue JAMB, FG, States and all the wacky schools to court to stop this destruction of our university system.

FreeStuffsNG:
University is not like that. If you have a quality university education you will not suggest that some courses are dumping ground for people who failed JAMB. If that's the case, Prof Wole Soyinka will not have the quality foundation he later used to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

It's common sense that JAMB is a university entrance exam, if you fail university entrance exam, you shouldn't be given a university admission because it means you are not a university material yet.

It is part of the mediocrity we have today that will make anyone feel okay with a candidate who scored less than 40% to be considered for university admission when 40% is the minimum pass score in universities.

Same lazy student with idle and fun loving lifestyle on social media 24/7 will fail JAMB and instead of insisting such student work hard you are now lowering the bar for such lazy and irresponsible student. Haba nah.


JAMB should be prosecuted for this atrocious mediocrity.