Varsity admission bodies yet to resolve standoff over mandate
Students and teachers of Booker Academy in Kakamega celebrate on March 6, 2016 for being the top school in Western province in the 2015 KCSE examination.165,766 candidates scored grade C+ and above, which is the minimum university entry requirement up from 149,717 candidates who obtained grade C+ and above the previous year. PHOTO | ISAAC WALE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Thousands of students were sent home last year as a programmes crisis hit some public universities due to a conflict between the institutions and accreditation bodies.
- But even before the results were released KMTC had warned applicants seeking vacancies in the institution against applying through KUCCPS, saying they will not be considered.
The fate of thousands of students who sat last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations and qualified to join university hangs in the balance as a standoff between higher education institutions and regulatory bodies remains unresolved.
In what is fast turning out to be an annual circus believed to be motivated by greed and appetite for money generated from students seeking higher education, daggers have already been drawn by higher education stakeholders trapping helpless students and parents in between.
Thousands of students were sent home last year as a programmes crisis hit some public universities due to a conflict between the institutions and accreditation bodies.
Most of them are yet to be recalled and many more are studying courses without knowing if they will get jobs once they finish.
Although the students who sat KCSE examination in 2015 selected the courses they desire to pursue while still in school, quite a number of them risk not joining college with the rest in August, as they may have selected unaccredited courses.
Worse, those wishing to pursue medical courses and did so either through the Kenya Universities and Colleges Placement Agency (KUCCPS) or the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) are also headed to an admission circus similar to the one witnessed last year as the two bodies are yet to resolve their differences.
Some 522,870 students sat the national exams last year.
Out of this 165,766 candidates — or 31.52 per cent scored grade C+ and above, which is the minimum university entry requirement up from 149,717 candidates — or 30.78 per cent who obtained grade C+ and above the previous year.
BATTLE CONTINUES
The Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) has already kicked the storm by warning Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Meru University of Science and Technology Multimedia University of Kenya, Technical University of Kenya and Technical University of Mombasa and University of Eldoret against admitting students for engineering courses.
“We have sent out warnings for non-accredited universities to stop admitting students to unapproved programmes,” said EBK’s registrar Nicholas Musuni.
“It is the responsibility of the training institutions to show that their programmes are intellectually credible, have sufficient number of qualified full-time faculty, have adequate laboratories and workshops, and run courses for five academic years.”
But even before the results were released KMTC had warned applicants seeking vacancies in the institution against applying through KUCCPS, saying they will not be considered.
The two institutions have been embroiled in a supremacy battle for the last two years that found its way to the High Court before being withdrawn after they agreed to an out of court settlement.
KUCCPS on Sunday trashed the alleged agreement insisting it is the only one mandated to select students to all public institutions including the medical college.
“That is what the law says and unless it is changed, there is no where it says KMTC and KUCCPS can sit down and agree on who will be selecting students for the other,” the placement body’s CEO John Muraguri told the Sunday Nation.
