- The founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Chief Afe Babalola, on Monday lamented the declining academic standards in the country, urging the National Universities Commission to raise the minimum entry requirements to improve the quality of those admitted to the universities.
The founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Chief Afe Babalola, on Monday lamented the declining academic standards in the country, urging the National Universities Commission to raise the minimum entry requirements to improve the quality of those admitted to the universities.
Babalola also urged the NUC to ensure a uniform final examination for graduating students to ensure quality of graduates.
The ABUAD founder spoke in Ado Ekiti while receiving the NUC Evaluation Team on Governance and Management Practices of Private Universities, who came to evaluate the schoolt.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who advised the NUC to include public universities in the evaluation exercise, said, “The myriads of problems affecting quality education are not only in private university, but also in public universities.”
The veteran lawyer backed the practice whereby admission was based on a minimum of two advanced level subjects or Higher School Certificate was required for admission to the university to study courses such as medicine and law.
He said, “Regrettably, admission qualification has been badly lowered that all a candidate needs to enter a university is a mere school certificate.”
He bemoaned the low minimum UTME score for admission.
Babalola said, “I suggest that there should be a unified cut-off mark which will not be lower than 40 per cent of the total marks below which no university can go without prejudice to the right of the Senate to increase the cut-off mark.
“Or we revert to the universal practice of making GCE Advanced Level the minimum qualification to gain admission to university.”
He added, “Because of a lack of facilities in Nigerian universities that I have earlier spoken about and particularly because of the quality of candidates we admit to Nigerian universities, I would like to suggest that we have a common examination for all final year students and in all courses like it is currently done in law.”
The ABUAD founder also told the NUC to recommence ranking of Nigerian universities.
The leader of the NUC team, Prof Yekini Sanusi, said the assessment was to ensure transfer of knowledge.
