By Jeremiah Wakaya
Twitter: @WakayaKE
The Government of Kenya has announced plans to admit Government-Sponsored Students to Private Universities. In a bid to increase access to university education in the country, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, through a taskforce constituted by Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i in April this year, announced plans to sponsor 10,000 K.C.S.E 2015 candidates to pursue degree programmes through the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (K.U.C.C.P.S) in various private varsities across the country.
The plan which has since taken effect with the current 2016/2017 year, will increase the number of students currently admitted through The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (K.U.C.C.P.S) from 74,389 to 84,389.Consequently, Degree cut-off points for Government Sponsorship have been lowered by two points to a B (Minus) of 58 points for boys and a B (Minus) of 56 points for girls.
In response to this The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (K.U.C.C.P.S) created an online portal through which aspiring candidates were invited to apply from August 24, 2016 midnight until August 31 midnight in what has been seen as a move to admit the 10,000 students in good time before learning resumes in September.
This announcement comes as a major victory for private universities which have been championing for admission of government-sponsored students since 2013 following the enactment of the Universities Act 2012, which provided for the same.
While this may be a relief to thousands of students whose dreams have been hanging on the balance due to the sky rocketing cost of tertiary education in the country, thousands more will still be locked out of the premiere institutions. According to the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) 2015 results, 165,766 candidates attained the minimum university entry grade of C (Plus) and above. Out of this though, the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (K.U.C.C.P.S) has barely absorbed 100,000. One asks the question, what happens to the remaining 81,377 candidates?
It is important also to note at this juncture that admission into universities by KUCCPS has always been on merit. Good as that may sound, the truth is quite a number of students who benefit from these government sponsorships are from well to do families which could have easily afforded self-sponsored programmes both in private and public universities. On the flipside, the vast majority who are unable to put up with the cut-throat competition for government sponsorships are often left with no choice than to give up pursuing higher education.
And so as the country rejoices and commends the government for the efforts it is putting in increasing access to university education, many more fundamental issues remain to be addressed. How for instance do we promote equity in a society that has such huge disparities when it comes to the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘haves not’? How do we ensure that a peasant’s son or daughter who struggled against all odds in an ill equipped village day secondary school to get the minimum university entry mark gets enrolled in a university?
The government subsidy for government-sponsored students for instance is Kshs 70,000/- per student, which leaves the student with about Kshs 16,000/- to clear in a given semester. This brings the total investment to private universities by KUCCPS to Kshs 700 Million compared to about 49 Billion allocated to public universities from July.
Important to note here is the fact that a self-sponsored student in a public university parts with a sum of between Kshs 70,000/- to Kshs 90,000/- per semester or even more depending on a programme being undertaken. A similar case applies to self-sponsored students in private universities although these figures may be relatively lower of higher depending on the institution of higher learning. This therefore leaves the 81,377 students locked out of KUCCPS with no choice than to accept their fate and move on in life albeit without the all important key in life that is education.
Lastly, the seemingly hostile environment for self-sponsored students who have often been viewed as cash cows has often put them at a disadvantage over their government-sponsored counterparts. As a matter of fact, these students receive very poor services in most cases in public universities-often being frustrated while seeking services they truly deserve. Will the self-sponsored majority in private universities replicate the same to their government-sponsored colleagues? Are they likely to view them as intruders and therefore secondhand students? Maybe, maybe not. I guess time will tell.
Jeremiah Wakaya is a student at The University of Nairobi, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism & Media Studies. Contact him via jeremiahwakaya@students.uonbi.ac.ke
Writted by Jeremiah for a ZETECH COLLEGE PUBLICATION
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