Moderation of Admission Standards in the Nigerian Polytechnics- An Alternative to Enhancing Quality of Graduates

The qualities of Nigerian graduates have been a source of concern.The polytechnics have come under criticisms as lacking capacities to turn out competent technologists. However,this paper picks this issue from a different angle.The graduating grade so fa sample of engineering students in apolytechnic were correlated with their entry performances (Secondary Certificate and Matriculation Examinations) over three sessions. The correlation was weak (r=0.13;Ho:=0 accepted at =0.025) while results in the first year examinations strongly correlated with graduating grades (r=0.84;H2: =0 rejected at =0.001). These suggest that by the qualities of students admitted in the first instance may be questionable and that the trend of post-entryp performancewas due to extra efforts by the polytechnic system.Thus,it may beneedfultom moderate admission criteria to be a true predictor of success rather than the polytechnics endeavouring to uplifting performance.