As the examination date for the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME) for admission into the nation’s tertiary institutions draws closer, application statistics by faculty released by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) showed Agriculture as the least subscribed programme by candidates seeking for spaces in universities.
According to JAMB in its March 11, 2019 bulletin, 32,729 candidates comprising of 14,586 females and 18,143 males respectively applied to study agriculture-based programmes in the nation’s federal, states and private universities.
The statistics also showed that Education came next with 90, 898 subscriptions, while candidates for Law and Legal Studies followed with 102, 961 applicants comprising of 58, 093 females and 44,868 males.
The number of candidates subscriptions by faculties also showed that Administration recorded 166, 348; Arts/Humanities had 108, 809; Engineering/Technology/Environmental Studies 208,932; Medicine/ Pharmacy/Health Science 435,899; Social Sciences 376,388, while statistics of subscription in the Science courses stood at 280,780 candidates respectively.
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This brings the number of candidates seeking for a place in the nation’s 169 federal, state and private universities registered for the 2019 UTME to 1,803,742 candidates.
However, as it was the trend year in year out, the preference for university education is yet to abate as the bulletin puts subscription figures for polytechnics National Diploma and College of Education NCE programmes at 43, 605 and 44,141 respectively.
However, 22 out of the 741 Computer Based Centres (CBT) approved for the registration exercise were suspended, while two had their services restored after satisfactory punishment was meted out to the offending staff of the centres.
