Third Republic Senator and Professor of Management, David Iornem has described the university admission crisis in Nigeria as a disaster worse than Boko Haram killings. He also said the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) was designed not to set qualification for university entrance, but to edge out candidates due to lack of capacity of Nigerian universities to accommodate Nigerians aspiring to further their education. Prof. Iornem who stated this while addressing a press conference in Kaduna yesterday, said, there was urgent need for a practical vision from the Federal Ministry of Education and the National University Commision (NUC). While noting that the press briefing was called to launch his campaign for introduction of university colleges, as part of his gift to Nigeria on his 64th birthday, the professor lamented that, out of over 1.7 million school leavers jostling for admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria, only 500,000 would succeed, leaving a massive majority of 1.2 million stranded. He said: “Nigeria does not need to re-invent the wheel in its efforts to confront what he described as a national crisis in the nation’s higher education sector. “All we need to do is to copy and adapt what Ghana is doing. The Ghana model has dramatically expanded the carrying capacity of its universities and it is working,” he said. Senator Iornem explained that United Kingdom was at a point faced with similar challenge, but solved the problem by creating opportunity for the establishment of small university colleges offering degree programmes in affiliation with established universities. According to him, “when Ghana was faced with the same problem, they went to the UK and studied their system of small university colleges set up by independent entrepreneurs under the supervision of universities to which they are affiliated. “Using the UK model, Ghana is now helping to absorb Nigerian students who cannot find admission in Nigerian universities. As I speak, close to 200,000 Nigerian students are in Ghana, studying at these university colleges,” he said. Professor Iornem noted that, in the past, there was no need for JAMB to select people to enter universities and other institutions of higher learning.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 19:09:59 +0000