The Kenya Universities and Collages Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) has selected over 72,000 students to join public universities, according to the organization’s website. This is the highest selection in Kenya’s history with the government also sponsoring diploma students for the first time.
The placement service has said that the government will be sponsoring over 56,000 students for the degree programs while more that 15,000 will pursue diploma courses. This comes at a time when Universities are struggling with accommodation and HELB struggling to finance tuition fee of the current students.
KUCCPS replaced Joint Admissions Board under Section 55 of the Universities act and one of its key roles is to select students who join university under government sponsorship. The Board approved the list of students who will be joining higher education this year.
It is however sad news for over 67000 students who failed to achieve the qualifying grade as they have not been selected. Nearly 450,000 students sat for the examination last year and 123,000 of them scored a C+ and above, which is the minimum qualifying grade to be selected. Most of those left out from the selection will join self sponsored programmes or private universities.
This year, the service lowered university entry requirements. Females who got a B-(minus) of 58 points and males who scooped a B of 60 points were selected. Those with C- were selected to pursue various diploma courses.
The selection has elicited different reactions from students.
Brenda Nganga, who scored a mean grade of A at Precious Blood Riruta, is not too happy. She has been admitted to pursue a degree in Law at the University of Nairobi but had wanted to study Dental Surgery.
“I feel extremely disappointed and I do not know what to do. I had always wanted to become a dental surgeon,” she told Capital Campus.
Her Friend, Faith, is however happy with the Board’s choice. “I have been selected to study History at Egerton and I am very excited about it,” said Faith.
It is now up to the universities to optimize on space and accommodate the students, as most of them were given students beyond their capacity.
Kenyatta University got the highest number of students with 5480 admissions with a bed capacity of 5454. This means that 26 of the will miss accommodation.
The University of Nairobi got 5053 students with bed capacity of 5031. Moi University was assigned 5030, Egerton 2767 and JKUAT 2597 against its capacity of 2583. Maseno University will be enrolling 2926 and Technical University of Kenya will admit 1827 students.
As the freshmen wait to join in September, we will travel across various universities and try to inform you on some of the best and cheapest accommodation available. Welcome to University, freshers!
