New admissions body to boost enrolment equity

Kenya has moved to reform the way students are admitted to universities by launching a new body that will equitably place learners in public and private universities as well as colleges.

The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service, or KUCCPS, will have representatives from private universities and colleges, a departure from the past when central admissions was the preserve of public universities.

The body effectively replaces the Joint Admissions Board, which has over the years faced growing criticism – by virtue of its composition – for placing all top students in public universities and leaving the rest for private institutions and tertiary colleges.

It is expected that KUCCPS will more fairly distribute qualified school-leaving candidates in both public and private universities. The new agency has been given an extended mandate to admit students to colleges.

It will also select students for self-sponsored courses – the so-called ‘parallel’ programmes for students who are not subsidised by the state and therefore pay full fees.

The Joint Admissions Board admitted students based on bed-capacity – the availability of facilities in specific universities – leaving all remaining students to seek admissions through self-sponsored programmes.

Education Secretary Professor Jacob Kaimenyi said the new board would help to end growing complaints that thousands of students who fail to attain the required pass mark for university – a C+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education – get admitted straight to universities without having to undertake bridging courses as required by law.

Recent media reports have claimed that universities, while pursuing commercial interests, have opened the doors to students with scores as low as D+, and that this has undermined the quality of learning in higher education.

KUCCPS will be governed by leaders of the Commission for University Education, Higher Education Loans Board, Technical and Vocational Education and Training Funding Board, two vice-chancellors representing public universities and two from private universities, two representatives from the Kenya Association of Technical Training Institutions, and the principal secretaries in the ministries responsible for higher education and for finance.

Kenya has over the past five years been grappling with a rising number of students seeking university admissions. This has made getting a place in a university a highly competitive affair that has been riddled with concerns of favouritism and unfairness.

Students from rich families, who can afford the ‘parallel’ programmes, have been taking spaces at the expense of those from poor backgrounds, with universities focused on raising income rather than on equity.

Last year, private universities called for the scrapping of the Joint Admissions Board, saying that it catered only for about one-third of the enrolment in public universities.

The launch of the new admissions body is the latest in a string of reforms lined up for higher education in Kenya.

A series of regulations and standards are being implemented in order to operationalise the Universities Act 2013 and, among other things, public universities – previously governed by individual acts of parliament – are being brought under the same law.