2018/19 UTME: Over Million Candidates Fail To Meet Requirement For Admission.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) have disclosed that only 585,498 candidates out of the 1,662,762 that wrote the 2018/2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) gained admission into tertiary institutions.

According to JAMB’s admission statistics, released on Sunday, September 8, 2019, 443,624 candidates were admitted into universities; 81,791 candidates were admitted into polytechnics; 59,498 were admitted into colleges of education; and 585 opted for Innovation Enterprise Institutions.

The figures, obtained by The Nation, showed that a total of 1,077,264 candidates who sat for the exam failed admission into any institution across the country.

The exam board revealed that the total admission capacity of these institutions were not filled because many candidates failed to meet requirements.

For example, a total of 143,338 available spots in universities across the country were not filled, as only 443,624 spots were filled out of a total of 586,962 available spots.

Polytechnics could also only fill 81,791 spots out of a total of 134,526 available spots; and colleges of education could only admit 59,498 candidates even though there was a total of 391,615 spots open for admission in 2018.

JAMB’s Head of Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, told The Nation that the failure to fill all available spots was down to the candidates.

“When you look at the over one million candidates applying through JAMB, how many of them are even qualified?

“It is just like you say you want to employ 10 medical doctors and you have 1,000 applications.

“Out of the 1,000 applications, 999 were people who read History, Mathematics and Chemistry.

“So, that is not a case of no jobs, but not meeting the requirements,” he said.

The 2018 UTME cutoff mark was pegged at 140 for universities, 120 for polytechnics and 100 for colleges of education.