Following the 2022/2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) which recorded that 378,639 candidates of the total 1,761,338 candidates who wrote the exam scored 200 marks and above, the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) on 21 July announced 140 marks as the national minimum cut-off for the 2022 university admission exercise and 100 marks for admission into polytechnics and colleges of education in the same year.
The decision of JAMB has since left many Nigerians wondering about the current state of education in the country. Some also wonder if the UTME gets tougher on a year-on-year basis considering how JAMB gets to reduce its cut-off mark every year. Between 2007 and 2022, JAMB has reduced the University’s admission cut-off mark from a minimum of 200 which is the average score of the overall 400 to as low as 120. The 2017/2018 UTME has the lowest cut-off mark of 120 since 2007.
Another important factor that is often used by the public to appraise the state of the nation’s education at the post secondary level is the incidence of strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Almost every year ASUU goes on strike, causing disruption in the academic calendar and a deferment in the programs’ duration. During ASUU strike, students are expected to leave the school premises as all academic activities are put on a halt. Since 2007, the Academic Staff Union of Universities has embarked on a total of 143 weeks of strike in ten academic sessions.
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When schools are in session, some of the UTME candidates visit their schools of choice for guidance and counselling at the schools’ admissions units, some candidates also get the opportunity to be tutored by University students who take up part-time teaching jobs, and some others get to use Universities facilities to prepare for their UTME through the assistance of friends, families or mentors who are registered students or workers in their chosen schools. All of these are expected to provide an enabling environment for UTME candidates to excel in their exams. Therefore, the primary assumption of this analysis is that the incidence of ASUU strike has a significant impact on the UTME performance.
Thus, we examined a link between the incidence of ASUU strike and performance in the UTME every year, using the JAMB cut-off mark as a baseline performance in the UTME dependent on the ASUU strike.
With 143 weeks cases of ASUU strike since 2007, a regression analysis shows that the incidence of ASUU strike is not associated with performance in the UTME from 2007 to 2022 admission year. The cases of strike only have 1.9 percent impact on UTME performance at p>0.05, which implies that the industrial action does not have a significant impact on the year-on-year decrease in performance in the UTME.
It is also observed that the 2017/2018 admission year which has the lowest UTME cut-off mark since 2007 recorded no strike by ASUU, whereas the 2020/2021 admission year which recorded the highest strike of 40 weeks has a minimum cut-off of 160 marks.
However, while we cannot pinpoint a convincing statistical link of the ASUU strike and the UTME performance, we were able to determine that the UTME baseline performance has continued to reduce year-on-year since 2007. After dropping from 200 marks in the 2007/2008 to 170 marks in the subsequent year, it increased to 180 marks in the 2009/2010 admission year which was maintained till 2017/2018 admissions exercise when it dropped sharply to 120 marks. The UTME cut-off mark again increased from 140 marks in 2018 to 160 marks in 2019 which was maintained till it reverted to 140 marks in the current 2022/2023 admission year.
The perception and assumption of the impact of ASUU strike extends beyond performance of candidates at the UTME. The intermittent ASUU strike is also believed to have ripple effect on the local economy. Professor Ndubuisi Ekekwe, the lead faculty at Tekedia institute and writer at the Harvard Business Review put this in good perspective when he said the following:
When students are in town, okada boys have jobs, mama put has buyers etc. In short every student could be contributing at least N1000 to the local economy (food, N800 and transport N200). Multiply this conservative N1000 by tens of thousands of students, workers and associate, you will see why every community wants a university. Withstrikes, those opportunities dry up.
It is suggested that the Nigerian government, the Academic Staff Union of Universities and other relevant stakeholders should in all sincerity work together to reach a comfortable financial structure for all parties to put an end to the incessant industrial actions that has continued to disrupt academic activities in the school and by extension economic activities in the country.
Rather than reduce admission standard every year, JAMB in conjunction with the Federal Government through the ministry of education should look inward to provide a lasting solution to the University/Polytechnic/College discrimination which has continued to add to university admission pressure every year.