New authority set up to admit varsity students
What you need to know:
- Two public universities vice-chancellors, alongside two others from private universities, Higher Education and Finance principal secretaries will sit on the new board.
All university admissions will now be handled by a new body.
The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service will deal with admission to public as well as private universities and middle level colleges.
The placement service replaces the Joint Admissions Board (JAB).
Under the new arrangement, private university students will have their State loans increased.
Unlike JAB, whose main task was to admit government-sponsored students to the public universities and their constituent colleges, the new agency will admit students into universities and colleges.
Offer guidance
It shall also offer career guidance to students entering the institutions, and shall have a board governing its work.
Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi is yet to appoint three officials to the 12-member board to make it operational.
Two public universities vice-chancellors, alongside two others from private universities, Higher Education and Finance principal secretaries will sit on the new board.
Head of Higher Education Loans Board, heads of Technical Industrial and Vocational Education Training Agency will also sit in the board.
A team led by Commission for University Education boss David Some visited the UK to understand how placement of university and college students is done.
“We have compiled our report on the best practices elsewhere and handed it to the Cabinet Secretary,” Prof Some said Thursday.
The new agency will seek to seal gaps that have characterised the work of JAB, including lock-out of many students who qualify for university admission.
Prof Freida Brown of the Association of Private Universities’ Vice-Chancellors said the new agency would not only level the playing field in admissions but also increase the numbers.
“It will see an existing backlog of students awaiting admission cleared,” said Prof Brown, who is also the Vice- Chancellor of United States International University (USIU).
Her counterpart, Mr Simon Gicharu of the National Association of Private Universities of Kenya, asked Prof Kaimenyi to expedite the appointment of the members of the new board.
Last year, private universities petitioned the government scrap JAB.
