Reservations trail adoption of 180 cut-off mark

In a bid to sanitise the tertiary education admission space, the Federal Government recently scrapped the post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) which has bred high level corruption and incredibly low standards in the system and adopted 180 as the cut-off mark for entry into all tertiary educations.

Adetunji Adegbesan, founder and CEO Gidimobile, an education technology company in his response to the adoption of 180 cut-off mark pointed that this amounts to an official endorsement of mediocrity. “It is alarming that the minister dropped the bar this low. Whilst we are faced with falling standard in our education system, policies should be designed to raise the standard not lower it. The failure rate at the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination is alarming.”

In 2012 the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) in collaboration with the National Universities Commission (NUC) commissioned a pilot University System Study and Review (USSR).

This study identified a number of infractions including admissions racketeering, misapplication and embezzlement of funds, sale of examination questions lack of and lack of commitment to work by lecturers among others.

Darlington Agholor, lecturer at the School of Business Administration, PanAtlantic University, Lagos in an impassioned remark contended that 180 as cut-off mark is quite poor. Out of a total possible score of 400 marks, 180 is less than 50per cent, this means there is a general drop in performance and we should be worried.