Thousands to miss places in varsities

About 60,000 candidates who have qualified to join public universities will be locked out of the next admission.

This is despite the fact that the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) has increased the number of students joining the universities by nearly half.

From the class of 2009, Education minister Sam Ongeri announced on Tuesday, 81,048 candidates scored the minimum C+ grade required for admission to a public university.

But due to shortage of places in the seven public universities, JAB is likely to set a high cut off point, locking out most of the qualified students.
This trend is now worrying secondary school teachers.

On Tuesday, the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association asked universities to open up more slots for the regular programme students.

Speaking at the Kenya Institute of Education after the release of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results, association chairman Cleophas Tirop said the number of students scoring C+ and above was increasing.

“It is unfair for the public universities to admit only 20,000 regular students and five times that number of parallel degree students every year,” said Mr Tirop.

Last year’s cut off mark was 65 points for male candidates and 64 for their female counterparts.