MYSCHOOLCOMMUNITY: July 2012

WHEN Nigerian universities were authorised to conduct their own Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as part of undergraduate admission process, they also introduced into the scheme a sinister game known as hide-and-seek. Part of the illegal plot involves massive financial extortion of prospective students and their parents. On a scale of absurdity or infamy, this one takes the top prize in the league of fraudulent practices invented and nourished by corrupt university administration officials in their determination to rig their own undergraduate admission system.
Are Nigerian universities offering admission to the highest bidders? Many prospective students and their parents are likely to respond in the affirmative. They have valid reasons to do so. Undergraduate admission places are being traded as commodities or commercial products. Candidates with lower scores (who are more financially endowed) are snapping up limited opportunities that ought to have gone to other candidates who achieved impressively higher scores in the UTME examinations.
Listen to agonising stories narrated by parents whose children sat the recent UTME examinations and who were denied admission despite the high scores they received. Why should prospective undergraduate students who apply for places in Nigerian universities be given unnecessary run-around, a vague way of muddling a process that ought to be transparent in intent and execution? Merit ought to drive the admission process in our universities. Unfortunately, it is not the case.
When parents are regularly denied clear explanations why their children who achieved high scores in the UTME examinations have not been offered places in the universities, they succumb to illegal demands for payments as a backdoor means of securing admission for their children. The magnitude of this crime is disturbing. It is widespread. It ennobles corruption.
The increasing adoption of crooked processes for admitting students into Nigerian universities has sullied the image of universities and diminished the quality of higher education in the country. If senior university officials claim ignorance of this malpractice, it must be because they don't want to hear about it or because they are direct beneficiaries of the scheme. For now, they have chosen to adopt the role of the three monkeys that prefer to see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.
Why should students and their parents be subjected to weeks and months of anguish in their efforts to make sense of university admission selection criteria that are deliberately mangled, complicated, unclear, unhelpful, unfriendly and unfathomable? When prospective students make simple requests for clarifications about the deliberately skewed and crooked admission process, the typical response is that selection is based on three key criteria. The first reason is that admission is based on merit, in particular a student's excellent performance in the UTME examination. This point has been contested vigorously by students and their parents, in light of the backroom deals that often result in admission being offered to students with very low scores.
The second explanation points to the so-called "catchment area" logic (that is, students are selected on the ground that they hail from states which are closely located to the university). The third underlying principle argues that selection decisions are based on the divine judgments of heads of departments. In some universities, heads of departments are automatically allocated a certain quota of the number of students to be admitted into their departments Other than merit-based selection, I have strong reservations about university admission procedures that privilege the selection of certain students over others, based chiefly on the proximity of the students' state of origin to their preferred university. If universities set minimum standards for admission, they must stick strictly to those criteria. Standards of selection should not be lowered deliberately in order to accommodate students whose home states and communities are geographically proximate to the universities. This particular principle makes nonsense of the philosophy that informs the use of examinations (UTME or post-UTME) to determine students who are academically qualified for admission. It is inappropriate for university admission to be decided on such a hollow argument.
Part of the reason why the nation has been overburdened with poor quality staff who occupy senior portfolios in the public service is because, for many years, federal ministries and departments were compelled to reflect "federal character" in the appointment of public servants. Rather than drive Nigeria's economic development, the "federal character" policy has driven the nation backwards.
The idea that heads of departments should be allocated a special quota of students to be admitted into their departments is an abuse of the admission process. It cannot be defended on sound logic. That rule gives heads of departments sweeping powers to decide who should be admitted and who should be denied admission. Owing to the open-ended nature of this privilege, it is often subject to gross abuses. Heads of departments can make selection decisions that are inherently biased, including decisions that are based on anecdotal assumptions rather than evidence tested through a fair examination process.
It is unthinkable that the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) which was instituted to check growing allegations of corruption among officials of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has now succeeded in cultivating at local university campuses the same evil that it was designed to eradicate. This is not evidence of progress but retrogression. It does not promote merit or excellence among students. It undermines rather than enhances the quality of students admitted into the universities, as well as the value of education offered to students.
Corruption breeds further sleazy practices. When students and their parents pay huge sums of money which are collected illegally by a clique that operates within the universities, the only guarantees given to parents and their wards are that receipts will not be issued and that payment does not constitute assurance that admission will be the final outcome. Parents and students who make illegal payments for which they receive no receipts are on their own. There is no evidence to uphold any claims they might make about payments they made. Corruption thrives in an environment in which payments are made but receipts are not issued by criminals who received the money.
The question must be asked why the Nigerian media, in particular privately owned and independent press, has kept silent in the face of the admission scandal in our universities. Editors and journalists cannot claim to be unaware of the magnitude of the fraud in the university admission system because parents and students have been complaining through letters addressed to the editors. If there is anything like investigative journalism in our society, the ongoing racket in university admission system should have been exposed. Investigative journalism in our system has collapsed owing to a range of factors such as lack of commitment by editors and media owners, inadequate financial resources to support public journalism projects, failure by news organisations to protect their journalists, as well as the culture of complacency in which journalists focus on one story today and abandon it tomorrow.
Why are men and women of integrity who manage university education in the country quiet on this disreputable conduct? The quality of teaching and learning in Nigerian universities has already deteriorated so badly that overseas institutions no longer consider the products of our universities as worthy of scholarly engagement. Now, a new form of fraud has been added to the execrable image of our universities. Vice-Chancellors of universities and the National Universities Commission (NUC) must lead in this house cleaning campaign. They have an obligation to act quickly, unless of course they have sanctioned the sleazy practice.
It is odd that this high level of deception and financial fraud are taking place in the university admission system in a country in which an anti-corruption agency – the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) – continues to delude the public that it is doing a fantastic job of catching corrupt officials at every level of society. If the EFCC wants to catch corrupt university officials, it should look no further than the victims of university undergraduate admission.
A rotten education system will always produce rotten outcomes. Nigerian universities are sowing today the seeds of poor graduate outcomes for the future. It is a dreadful experience that must concern everyone who has a stake in promoting quality in higher education. Many parents and prospective students have suffered incalculable emotional trauma caused by a system that promised fairness and transparency but has delivered discrimination, inequality, favouritism, and nightly anxiety. Undergraduate admission in Nigerian universities must be based on merit and nothing else.

MYSCHOOLCOMMUNITY

Sunday, July 22, 2012

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