I recently read some article in the newspapers referring to the plan by Jamb to scrap the post UME exams written by students. Just in case you don’t know, like I previously did not, post UME is an exams that students who pass jamb exams have to take again to get admitted into universities. The exams are conducted by the universities themselves and cost these students some damn good money. Let us do a simple analysis on the cost of entering universities yearly.
The recently concluded “UME” exams conducted by jamb had a total of 1,493,604 students sitting for it. At N4,600 for a jamb form this put the cost at a staggering N6,870,578,400 (N6.8b) for students sitting for the exams. Ten years ago in 2001 it was N1,500. From the 1.4m students who sit for the exams about 650,753 (43.5%) students score above 200 marks. Students who pass also write post UME exams conducted by universities across the country. If we assume 650, 753 of the students who pass are eligible for admission at an average cost of N1500, they pay an extra N976, 129, 500 to Universities across the country. Thus bringing the cost of writing entry exams into our tertiary institutions to about N7.8b annually. These exclude cost of preparation for the exams, transport cost, cost of those who purchase forms but do not sit for the exams, and cost of checking results. I wonder why after paying N6.8b students have to pay another sum of money for the so called post UME exams. This is just a rip off of Nigerian students. Let us looking at this in a larger context.
The cost of writing pre tertiary exams is usually within the range for Jamb. For example according to wikipedia SAT subject test cost about $31 (N4,960) for local students in the US which compares favorably to JAMB cost of N4,600 per student. The question really is what do they use the N6.8b for? Conducting test for over 1.4m students is definitely not cheap but I want to believe it should be much cheaper than we have. The students normally write these test in environments that are not conducive and write them just once on the same day. Unlike SAT where students take the test at different period during the year. If students spend as much as N6.8b and another N970m every year on writing exams to gain admission into tertiary institutions then most of that money needs to find its way back to the secondary schools who prepare these students for the exams. Students must have all the tools that are available for them to prepare and sit for the exams. After all a student somewhere in Jalingo sitting in a classroom with no roof and with no reading materials still gets to write the same exam with a student in an expensive private school in Lagos or in Abuja. Jamb should also introduce free exams for students who cannot afford to pay as is done in other parts of the world.
Every year, students cough out N4,600 in writing these exams with little or no assurances that they will gain admission into the universities. Universities cannot even admit all of them even if they pass. A recent newspaper report shows of the 99,195 applications received by Unilag only 9,507 students will be admitted. A meager 9.58%!!!! In fact it was reported that available spaces for admission was 500,000. Meaning 33.4% of students who write the exams are admitted into Nigerian Tertiary Institutions. Come to think about it, Jamb doesn’t even have any data on the jamb.org.ng website.They don’t even have a functional website, except for checking results and admissions. No historical data on the exams despite all the money being collected. Its time for them to allow us “examine” their books!!!
