Varsities suffer as students snub over 72 degree courses

No student from last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates was selected to pursue some 72-degree courses.

This comprises 16 courses which did not attract any applicant and another 56 where Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) did not place any student.

These details emerged after the release of the 2019 university placement report for the 2020/2021 academic calendar on Tuesday.

Data shows Egerton University has six courses that did not attract any applicant while Kisii University did not get students for two courses.

Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha has regularly advised universities to abolish courses that do not attract students and not aligned to current job demands.

KUCCPS Chief Executive Officer John Muraguri said only 2,228 of the 10,289 registered schools and examination centres submitted their candidates’ choices.

“We are concerned about this low participation of schools at this important step of the placement process. To address this concern, KUCCPS recommends to the ministry to issue a policy guideline to all schools, especially those with candidates eligible for placement to TVET institutions, to ensure they submit the applications on behalf of their KCSE candidates for university and TVET placement,” Dr Muraguri said.

He said applicants unable to get the courses of their choice in the institutions they preferred were placed in similar courses in alternative institutions and in programmes that did not attract at least a reasonable percentage of students.

“This secured government sponsorship for 43,817 applicants who would have missed it otherwise,” Muraguri said, adding that the inter-institutional transfer window will open on June 15 for a month.

Maseno and Meru universities that had spaces for 100 students each, did not receive applications for Bachelor of Science in Economics and Statistics with IT and Bachelor of Education Technology in Civil Engineering respectively.

There were no applications for Bachelor of Science in Oceanography at Pwani University and Bachelor of Science in Animal Production at University of Embu.

Umma University did not also receive any application for its Bachelor of Law and Sharia and Bachelor of Commerce.

University of Kabianga and Tharaka University College did not receive applications for their Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Education and Extension and Bachelor of Agribusiness Management respectively.

KUCCPs did not place any student for 56 other courses spread across universities in Kenya.

Some of them are six courses offered at Masaai Mara University that include botany, environmental studies and zoology.

Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology and Meru University did not receive students for their three and four courses respectively.

South Eastern Kenya University and Turkana had five and four of their courses respectively receiving no student. University of Embu, University of Eldoret, Maseno, Karatina and Africa International University did not receive students for some of their courses.

During the 2020/2021 placement cycle, 145,129 degrees and 276,163 TVET programme vacancies were available for placement.