More than 700 diploma students at Meru University of Science and Technology (MUST) face a bleak and uncertain future after the institution failed to issue them with their certificates long after they had completed their various courses.
Most affected is the class of 2020 who joined MUST to pursue diploma courses under the TVET CDACC programme, which, like all diploma courses listed on the institution's website, lasts two years.
At best, they argue, they should have been among the graduates of the 10th graduation in March 2023, whose names are listed on the MUST website.
None of the affected cohort, whose names and admission letters we have seen, have graduated.
With little to no recourse, they now watch helplessly as their hard work is wasted.
Worryingly, however, there are other cohorts of students pursuing various diploma courses under the TVET CDACC programme who may well face the same fate if the matter is not resolved in time.
Njeri* (not her real name), a TVET Curriculum Development Assessment and Certification Council (CDACC) student from MUST, is worried sick.
She has not received verifiable marks for all her years of study, while some of the marks are missing and she has missed her study schedules.
She enrolled in the institution in 2020, and after doing her part, she expected to graduate from the two-year Information, Communication and Technology course in 2022, but she didn't. In her class of about 50 students, no one graduated either.
"I got my first marks in May 2023, right from my first year," she says.
In a twist of fate, the transcript Nancy received in May that year did not include all the unit marks and was riddled with errors. She was also told that the results should have been offered by KNEC, not TVET CDACC, which was the institution that had supervised her studies.
"I spoke to the administration this week and they told me that we have been taken out of KNEC and put under the TVET CDACC wing. The administration is not sure about our marks. I even took the personal initiative to visit the KNEC offices to inquire if they are the ones who will give us the diploma and they told me: 'The marriage between KNEC and CDACC can be likened to a come we stay arrangement and they don't have the mandate to give us the certificate or the result slip'," she narrates.
At the moment, the students have a result slip given to them by the university, but the slip raises Nancy's eyebrows because of the words written on it: "This is not a transcript that can be changed".
According to the provisional transcripts, Nancy has missing marks and will have to retake the exams sometime in July 2023. However, she is worried that there is a looming uncertainty about the exams.
"The unit exams for the missing marks are in July. I don't know when it will start. I don't have the money, so how will you tell me to retake the exams?" she wonders. "We have tried to contact the administration to ask about the exams coming in July, but they tell us to wait for the TVET CDACC to communicate."
On 11 March 2023, the university held a graduation ceremony to award degrees and diploma certificates to graduates, but surprisingly, Nancy and other TVET CDACC students were not included.
The ICT diploma student applied for the programme on the KUCCPS portal and would pay between Sh19,000 and Sh23,000 per semester for fees and Sh5,600 for exams.
"We paid for exams whose results we never received. The exams had a TVET CDACC logo and the examiners were from the same body. How the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) came into the picture remains a mystery," she offers.
KNEC Chief Executive Officer David Njeng'ere clarified to the Sunday Nation that the council had taken over TVET CDACC, but distanced itself from the claims of delayed completion.
"KNEC took over the TVET CDACC assessment function in July last year," he responded. [However, the] vice-chancellor of MUST has all his information... He should be the one to respond on the graduation of students".
Another student, Mr Ochenge*, is an affected student who also joined Meru University in November 2022 to pursue a Diploma in Mechatronics, which he had undertaken and expected to complete after two academic years.
Two and a half years later, he says, he is behind schedule and his path seems to have taken an unprecedented, unforeseen turn.
"We studied for three semesters for each academic year, and in July last year we finished our courses and went to an industrial placement. So we were expecting to graduate at the end of last year or the beginning of this year," he says.
And now, the vision of graduating seems far-fetched for Ochenge and his fellow students when they receive their first results in April this year.
"I took 21 units and paid Ksh 114,000 for the entire programme on a government-sponsored basis, while the self-funded students paid a slightly higher fee," he explains.
Three years later, however, the mechatronics class of 41 students has been left stranded.
Come June 2021, Ochenge's class will be questioning their marks because they've sat the first exam but haven't received their results.
The administration, led by a TVET director, kept telling them to be patient as the results would be processed and released by the TVET CDACC.
"We even engaged the school's registrar, vice-chancellor and other administrators, who claimed that TVET was a government body and they didn't have any control over it. To some extent we were convinced because those who are doing the diploma under MUST don't have any problem," he says.
Evans says the teaching and setting of the exams was done by MUST lecturers, but TVET CDACC, an external body, came into the picture to check the standards of the exam and administer it. The mechatronics student notes that the 2020 cohort were the pioneers of the TVET CDACC programme.
"We are confused, around March-April 2021, we did our first exams and then we did other exams in September. In 2022, we started asking for our results, but we still didn't get them. Immediately after the elections in August 2022, we were informed that we had been transferred from TVET CDACC to KNEC by the administration and it was only in April 2023, after a student unrest, that the university gave us a provisional transcript with missing units," he says, adding that they expected KNEC to give them all their results once they had completed the industrial attachment.
Mr Thiaine Kubaison, the Director of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) at MUST, said that "the problem is not with the institution".
"The CDACC's mandate was transferred to KNEC following a presidential directive," he said. "They were only recently reinstated. There is confusion as to who should release the exams. Institutions and students are suffering because of this confusion."
"When their mandates were transferred, they had our results and reports. As you know, an examination body cannot release results with a council," he added, explaining that the CDACC examination system works like the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), where students have to pass all their exams to graduate.
