KENYA: Row brews over admission to varsities

Private universities are stoking a high-voltage controversy after writing to the government seeking the dissolution of the Joint Admissions Board (JAB), calling it an illegal entity, reports The Nation.

They also want admission of students to both private and public universities levelled in terms of enrolment and allocation of resources. The universities say the board that selects and admits students to public universities is not entrenched in the Universities Act, which guides the higher education sector in Kenya.

Vice-chancellors and council chairmen of Kenya's 23 private universities have been pushing for a deal with the government since last year to ease the admissions crisis in public universities and increase the student population. The move comes a few months after the government announced plans to use private universities to ease the admission crisis in the public institutions by assigning 20,000 qualified students to private universities and paying their fees as though they were under the so-called regular programmes.
Full report on The Nation site