Not a Single Liberian Student Passed This Year's University Admission Test

There are obviously a lot of changes to be made, but to start with, the university should admit the highest scorers, and give them remedial instruction. The fact that they didn't learn English shouldn't disqualify them. Doesn't the University know how to teach English?

Not a Single Liberian Student Passed This Year's University Admission Test
28 August 2013
Written by Ndesanjo Macha
Global Voices

As Liberia marks the 10th anniversary of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the 14-year civil war, nearly 25,000 school-leavers failed this year's admission test to the University of Liberia. It is the first time that not a single candidate passed the admission test.

Liberia's president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel peace laureate, acknowledges that the education system in Liberia is “in a mess”. Public Domain photo from the US State Department.

The BBC has reported that Liberia's Education Minister Education Minister, Etmonia David-Tarpeh, found it hard to believe that not a single candidate passed. She therefore intends to meet university officials to discuss the matter. She describes the failure rate as “mass murder.”

However, a private consultant, James Dorbor Jallah, who was hired by the university to manage the entrance examination confirmed the report and said the days are over when students were admitted into the University of Liberia through bribery or based on how many important people they know.

The world has reacted on Twitter with shock and disbelief at the news.

This is how Kenyan Harvard Kennedy School Professor Calestous Juma (@calestous) described the news:

King Leopold II of Belgium was the sole and de facto owner of the Congo Free State, the present day the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 1885 to 1908.