Cut in university entry grade hits KMTC enrolment

Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) has failed to meet its enrollment target following a sharp drop in the number of KCSE candidates scoring the C+ and above grade required for university entry.

The medical college has raised an alert through a June 25, 2018 memo over the fall in applications for diploma and certificate courses and has launched a marketing plan through students and staff members.

This is a departure from past trends where KMTC had to leave out thousands of applicants.

KMTC targets to admit about 20, 000 students annually to its 65 campuses spread across the country.

Admission to public universities of nearly all students who scored C+ and above over the past two years has reduced the pool of learners available for KMTC, private universities and parallel degree students in public universities.

“Universities are admitting the C+ and above and even all those with grade Cs do not meet the threshold since they did not pass in the required cluster subjects, making it difficult for us and other private institutions which thrived on parallel programmes,” said a top official at KMTC who sought anonymity.

He said although 100,906 students scored between a C and C- grades—the minimum graded for diploma and certificate courses at KMTC—most fail to meet the subject clusters. “Those with C- are locked out because this is a medical institution and the others did not all pass in the required cluster subjects,” he said. KMTC requires a minimum of C- for a certificate course. and C for diploma.

The college registrar Lucy Waweru reckons that the significant drop in last year’s science subjects locked out many applicants.

“The number of students who did not perform well in the required cluster subjects especially Biology is one among the reasons. We offer science based programmes and we are not willing to compromise on that,” said Waweru.