More students destined to benefit educationally

The move by the ministry of education to scale down direct entry points for public university from 58 to 56 for girls and 60 to 58 for boys is laudable. This move will increase the number of students admitted at public universities nationwide. Since time immemorial it has been a preserve of students hailing from national and provincial schools dominating public universities as those from county schools and CDF schools were left out in the cut off points.

In addition students from humble backgrounds who had lost hope of attaining university education will now have their hopes come to fruition because majority of these students learn in village schools with no adequate facilities. Funny enough some schools have no libraries and computer laboratories worse enough, some take classes under tree shades.

It is worth noting that we are living in an era where education is vital, a tool to help curb ignorance, poverty and streamline any society to be developed. As such having a nation with majority of its population educated is grooming the society towards economic development.

The move is also set to improve the education sector in the private sector because 10,000 students have been allocated slots in the private universities to ensure that the negative image that has been associated to these institutions decreases. Some notable cases have been closure of some institutions of higher learning especially in the private sector for having failed to live up to the standards. Many institutions thus will have to meet the requirements to ensure that we face out the generation of half-baked graduates in our education system.

It is also important to note that double entry system that was hatched and implemented in 2010 by the coalition government resulted to congestion of students in public universities, something that has raised questions on the credibility of our education system. Having 10,000 university students in private universities is a key move to ensure that our sons and daughters get quality education.

In addition more job opportunities will be created in private universities because more number of lectures will be hired and support staff to meet the high number of students. This in the long run will help curb unemployment in our country.

This is a positive move that the national government has taken that will help the country to achieve vision 2030 goal. The same step should be embraced by our county governments to ensure that in each county we have a public university and other tertiary institutions in each and every ward to cater for all students both from needy and well to do backgrounds. The government should also create employment opportunities that will tap these students because it will not make any economic sense to have a population comprising of unemployed people.