Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed recently released the list of the placement of former high school students to universities. And, in what her predecessor termed “cleaning the education system,” more than half of the students had flopped their KCPE exams and were, therefore, not absorbed into any university.

In fact, the number of those who qualified was so low that some universities received five students or none. This can only mean the majority who sat last year’s KCPE are staring at other options. That got me thinking; is university education really that important?

See, we grew up wired in a certain way; hooked to certain information. We were told how men were supposed to dress and what chores they were expected to do. We were told when to go to bed, how to wear our sleeves, when to study, when to play and when to start talking to the opposite sex. Mainly, we were told that education was the key (to what, we may never find out). And, joining university was the apex of it all.

So we worked hard trying to score ‘As’ and graduate with distinctions at universities. We crammed, copied assignments and became teachers’ pets just so we could pass. Until some of us grew up and, instead of studying books, started studying the world and realised that books weren’t really all there was to life.

In the quest to study the world we read of the Richard Bransons, Oprah Winfreys and Quentin Tarantinos of this world. Then we came across Steve Jobs who said: “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.”

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People can make it and many have actually made it without going through university.

The thousands that failed to clinch places in universities; you’ll be fine. This is the time to discover yourself; to know your true worth, to find out what else you can do outside the confines of a university lecture room.

You can get into a mid-level college and do that Diploma programme and master your art then later join a degree program. You can also take this time to engage in business early.