Economy

5,000 students fail to take up university slots

grads

A past graduation ceremony. FILE PHOTO | NMG

More than 5,000 government -sponsored students who were placed in private universities in September last year failed to take up their slots, further pushing down numbers after mass exam failure.

Data from University Funding Board indicate that out of the 17,368 students who were selected by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) to join the institutions, only 12,000 took up their slots.

University funding board chief executive Milton Njuki said they used Sh2 billion to place the students in the private universities.

Statistics indicate that less than 25 private universities admit government-sponsored students while others have been unwilling to participate in the programme that was started in 2016 as a measure to address the problem of admission of students based on bed capacity in public universities.

“We believe that the more than 5,000 students who did not take up their slots joined technical colleges or other institutions,” said Mr Njuki adding that the turnout was an improvement as compared to 2016.

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In 2016, its only 6,318 out 12,096 government sponsored students that joined private universities that they had been selected to.

“The previous cohort were selected late but last year it was done at the same time with those joining public universities and that is why the turnout improved last year,” explained the chief executive officer.

Already placement of KUCCPS has started to place students in various degree programme for September intake.

According to Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, the available university vacancies for the year 2018 was 98,703 students.

However, the number of qualified students who attained C+ and above from 2017 KCSE examination were 69, 151.