2022 UTME: Only 24,069 applicants out of 1,761,262 apply to colleges of education

Despite the government’s efforts to make teaching more appealing to young Nigerians, applicants seeking admission into tertiary institutions where teachers are trained are showing little interest in education courses, accounting for only 2% of those who sat for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, administered by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB.

According to a document from the 2022 Policy Meeting of JAMB with stakeholders in the sector, just 24,069 of the 1,761,262 candidates who sat for this year’s UTME applied to the over 100 colleges of education dispersed throughout the country. This represents around 1% of all applicants.

In 2021, out of the 1,351, 284 people that sat for the exam, only 15, 747 chose the COEs, representing 1.17 percent of the total figure.

The situation is much worse in private COEs, as the first eight private COEs only drew a total of 177 applicants in 2021, despite JAMB permitting them to accept nearly 17,000 students.