The way in which JAMB Should Conduct Entrance Exercise Into Tertiary Institutions

I came across this interesting piece on one of the popular forums and think it will be of interest to Giststudents readers. Please read and share your opinion;

"It’s really sad that after 38 years of setting up the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB), she’s still on the quest to getting it right. It hurts when I see bright minds deprived of the opportunity to further their education largely due to the incompetence of the examination body. A question always pop into my mind: “Can’t we just scrap this system?”

Here is my view of what I feel should be the way forward

JAMB really needs to look beyond conducting examination. She should serve more as a portal that connects the students with the tertiary institutions. What do I mean by this, students should only register through JAMB having meet up with the requirements laid down by the body and their credentials should be forwarded to the institutions for the admission process

The system should be done in such a way that a candidate can only choose a max. of 5 institutions. The payment method should also be a factor of the number of schools chose. The minimum could be 2 institution costing N4,000 flat. An addition of extra school determines how much you eventually pay. E.g. For every extra school pick, you pay an addition of 1,000 to the 4,000 flat.

Access the website, fill up the number of institutions interested, print out the transcript, go to the nearest bank to pay, collect your pin and finally logon to begin your application. This will reduce the cost of printing scratch card which does not even sale for the exact amount in some part of the country. Some agents go the length of adding extra N300 before purchasing the card from them.

Once the application is closed for the year, JAMB should then sit down and process the various entries. A centralized timetable will then be designed for the conduct of the exam. Candidate who chose UI and other schools for example might take the other school’s (UniZik, FUTMINNA, IMSU and AAUA) exam first before taking that of UI’s depending on the calendar drafted. If a candidate who chose UNIBEN logon for the exam, he would be redirected to UNIBEN’s question which was set by the school herself.

This means JAMB technically have no question but serve as a middleman between the school and the candidate. This is where University standard come in to play. OAU’s questions might be more challenging compared to University of Uyo and students who wishes to attend OAU have to prepare very well.

After the examination, either the school/JAMB can mark (objectives) depending on the agreement reached and the result is then forwarded to the institutions. The result will then determine the cut-off mark to be used by the institution.

If for example, a candidate made it in to 3 of the 5 schools selected, he has the period of a month to accept just one of it creating vacuum for another potential candidate at the school he rejected.

This will balance the population across the institutions in Nigeria."

I think this is really cool. What do you think about his idea?