The Federal Government has fixed sixteen years as the minimum age for admission into tertiary institutions in the country. The decision is aimed at ensuring academic, emotional preparedness and intellectual maturity among candidates. The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, announced the decision during the 2025 Policy Meeting of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Abuja.
Alausa said the new age requirement seeks to align students’ cognitive development with the academic rigours of higher education, insisting that sixteen years is now the non-negotiable threshold for university, polytechnic, and college of education admissions across the country. The decision by the federal government is commendable because university education requires both emotional and psychological maturity.
However, the implementation of the policy is very important. No university should violate the new admission age policy. Therefore, the federal government must ensure that the new admission age policy is strictly implemented. Let all the concerned stakeholders comply with the decision of the government. Sadly, there have been reports that some tertiary institutions, universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education admit under-aged children in their drive for profit and increase in student population.
The dangers of admitting under-aged students in tertiary institutions are many. Apart from lowering the academic standard, some of the students drop out of the university because of inability to cope with academic rigours as well as managing peer pressure. At the same time, some of them may suffer depression due to poor performance and inevitable withdrawal from the institution.
In most cases too, the under-aged students spend more years in school to complete their studies due to failure in some courses and the consequent carry-overs. The government has a huge role to play to ensure that the current policy on age limit for admission into tertiary institution is seamlessly implemented by all the stakeholders.
Before now, JAMB had pegged the age limit for admission into Nigerian universities at sixteen. This is clearly stated in the yearly JAMB brochure. In spite of that, report shows that some private universities admit students who are below sixteen years. There is also the concern that some parents push their children into universities at very tender age without minding their maturity level and capacity to cope with the rigours of university education.
The falling standard of education in Nigeria could be attributed to having under-aged students in tertiary institutions. Academic activities in universities and sundry tertiary institutions require maturity and emotional stability which come with age. Although there are few exceptional cases where some gifted children can cope with the rigours of varsity education beyond their age.
The emphasis should be on excellence and not on the swiftness with which academic glory is attained. Having pegged the admission age at 16, the government should enlighten parents, prospective students and other stakeholders on the dangers of rushing under-aged children into tertiary institutions.
We enjoin all universities and other tertiary institutions to abide by the new admission age policy. On no account should the new age policy be vitiated or circumvented. Apart from brilliance, students require emotional stability to cope with academic activities in the varsities and other tertiary institutions.
Beyond pegging the admission age policy, the federal government must frontally address the mounting challenges facing the nation’s universities and other tertiary institutions in the country. The issue of poor funding affects almost all our universities. However, the funding inadequacy is more pronounced in the state and private universities. Some of these institutions of higher learning are poorly staffed and scantly equipped in terms of infrastructure, libraries and laboratories.
This can also explain the poor global ranking of our universities. Available records from the National Universities Commission (NUC) showed that as at June 2024, Nigeria had about 274 universities, comprising 62 federal universities, 63 state universities and 149 private universities. Currently, it has about 152 polytechnics awarding National Diplomas (ND) and Higher National Diplomas (HND) and others.
It has also 152 accredited colleges of education offering mainly National Certificate in Education (NCE). Only a few of them offer degree programmes. Even with the proliferation of these tertiary institutions in the country, there are bills before the National Assembly to establish more.
Instead of rushing to establish more universities and other tertiary institutions across the country by politicians and businessmen, efforts should be made to fully fund, equip and develop the existing ones. In fact, there should be a moratorium on the establishment of new universities.
