The Head, Media and Information of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Dr Fabian Benjamin, in a statement yesterday said that the board has expanded the carrying capacities of some of the higher institutions for 2016/2017 admission.
He equally stated that the enrollment for Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Monotechnics and Innovative Enterprise Institutions has improved.
He reacted to the recent comments by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Prof. Rahmon Bello who said that JAMB is responsible for admission challenges in higher institutions and advocated that there should be separate entrance examination for Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education.
According to Mr Fabian, what the VC failed to put into consideration was the fact that it was due to the admission challenges necessitated by the separate entrance examinations for universities, polytechnics and colleges of education that informed the decision for a Unified Examination.
He stressed that when the board was conducting UME for universities and MPCE for other institutions of higher learning, one of the concerns of stakeholders was the negligible number of candidates sitting for the MPCE. Where you have over a million candidates applying for UME, and less than 200,000 applying for MPCE.
He noted that going back to separate examinations would only worsen the situation and further place heavy financial burdens on the candidates, as they would want to sit for all the examinations to achieve the same result that the unified examination was currently giving them.
He attributed the preference for Universities over polytechnics and COE to the issue of Bsc/HND Dichotomy and called on the government to resolve the issue.