19,000 fail to land degree courses of first choice

A total of 19,209 candidates who sat for the 2015 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination failed to get their first degree course choices after the selection of students to join public universities.

The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) said the students will have to do a second and final revision of course choices ahead of admission in September.

The service’s CEO, Mr John Muraguri, said the unplaced students have until June 18 to select new courses they wish to undertake.

“This will apply to all candidates who, after competitive selection, have not been placed for any of the degree or diploma courses of their choices,” Mr Muraguri said.

He went on: “Successful candidates will be informed at the end of June after the selection is completed.”

Statistics from the agency indicate that 74,389 candidates will join 32 public universities in September.

Private universities have been allocated 10,000 government-sponsored students. This is being done on a pilot basis.

The arrangement follows recommendations by a task force that was constituted by Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i last month.

Art-related and environmental courses, and the Bachelor of Science programme were least preferred, while medicine, engineering, law and actuarial science were the most popular, with all slots having been filled.

The number of unfilled slots for arts-related courses stands at more than 4,000.

The University Of Nairobi has 446 unfilled places, with 201 being in the Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology) programme and 130 for Bachelor of Arts, with the remainder being for Bachelor of Science and Education.

The university declared its capacity was 5,374.

At Kenyatta University, there are 392 unfilled slots, while Moi University has 1,525.

Egerton University has 196 unfilled slots.