A majority of candidates who scored grade ‘A’ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in 2014 failed to get their first choice courses in public universities.
Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), the body charged with admitting students to public universities, says it raised entry points for popular courses like medicine, architecture, engineering, computer science, and actuarial science.
The rise came after candidates scored high grades in the national exams given the total number of those who scored ‘A’ and A– was 14,841, compared to 12,481 the previous year.
Some 3,073 candidates scored straight A’s in the exam, up from 2,722 in 2013. But the popular courses including medical, architecture, engineering, computer science, and actuarial science admitted 2, 970 students.
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“We offered the chances on merit. Top performers definitely were given priority for the courses they had chosen,” KUCCPS chief executive officer John Muraguri said while revealing that about a third or 20,000 candidates failed to get their first course choices.
For example, only 28 students have been selected to purse dental surgery, medicine (320), pharmacy (131), architecture (143) and 606 will take computer science. This is a drop in the ocean, considering the high number of students seeking these in-demand courses with high job opportunities.
Liberal Arts and Environmental courses were least preferred because candidates felt they offered fewer openings in the job market. Bachelor of Arts courses proved to be most unpopular and had more than 3,000 unfilled capacities. Statistics from KUCCPS indicate that 67, 790 students will join public universities from September compared to 57,250 last year.
Last year, 149,717 students attained the minimum university entry mark of C+ or better, a 27.5 per cent increase from 123,365 in 2013.
Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology had the highest number of unfilled capacities at 1,644 followed by Moi University (1,447) and University of Nairobi with 1,154.
The number of students enrolled in public universities grew 25.4 per cent last year to 363, 334, buoyed by the approval of new degree courses and the setting up of new universities.
Varsity students stood at 38, 733 in 2000, nearly a ten-fold growth over the past 15 years, in what is putting pressure on the government to create jobs for the graduates.
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