A student fills in registration forms at the University of Nairobi last year. Photo/SALATON NJAU
More than half of the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination candidates who scored C+ and above are yet to apply for university placement with two weeks left to the deadline.
Data from the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) shows so far, 104,514 out of the 246,391 who qualified for university admission have applied for placement in degree programmes.
The KUCCPS extended the application window to April 30 from the initial April 21, 2025 to allow more candidates to make the application.
“So far we have received 104,514 degree applicants and we are encouraging students to take up agricultural courses at degree level,” KUCCPS Chief Executive Agnes Mercy Wahome told Nation.
"The response has been good so far. We've not had problems with the application system. The integration with e-Citizen has been seamless since we enhanced the IT infrastructure," she added.
Sensitisation campaign
She said that KUCCPS staff, including some on contract, are conducting sensitisation campaigns countrywide.
She explained that the deadline was pushed to from April 21 to April 30 because there are more applicants this year than in recent years.
She noted that some 8,130 students that scored C+ and above, making them eligible for degree placement, had opted for diploma courses.
The diploma courses they opted for are in technical and vocational education and training colleges institutions, the Kenya Medical Traioning College (KMTC), Kenya School of Law (KSL) and Morendat School of Oil and Gas.
This year like in previous years, the placement agency expects a section of candidates ( about 15 per cent) attaining university qualifications to pursue studies abroad, in private universities and other institutions.
The KUCCPS system assesses an applicant’s performance and match it out with a particular cluster group before a decision is made.
The platform allows the placing of students that sat the 2024 KCSE in universities and TVETs so they can commence their studies this year. The academic calendar for most universities begins between August and September.
For TVETS, the platform targets 2024 and previous year’s KCSE candidates who never benefitted from government-sponsorship for placement to Diploma, Craft Certificate and Artisan courses.
So far universities have declared capacities of about 300,000 which is enough to accommodate all the 2024 candidates that scored C+ and above.
The declared slots by the universities are controlled by the Commission for University Education (CUE) which considers the facilities available in the institutions to determine how many students can be accommodated.
A High Court ruling in December quashed the funding model introduced by the government in May 2023, leaving it unclear how freshmen joining universities alongside those in their second and third year of study will be funded.
KUCCPS appealed the ruling but its attempt to have it stayed to allow the placement of students into various programmes flopped. Following the ruling, the KUCCPS said it will not display the cost pegged on academic programmes on its portal as had been the norm over the past two years.
The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) Chief Executive Officer Agnes Mercy Wahome during the release of the placement report for the KCSE 2023 candidates in Nairobi on May 21, 2024.
Prior to the High Court ruling, institutions of higher learning were required to publicise the actual course cost to allow students and their guardians to make informed choices about the programmes on offer and plan accordingly.
Students that make it to the final placement list by KUCCPS will be eligible for government support through scholarships, loans and bursaries.
Centre applications, otherwise known as school applications for placement of government-sponsored students to universities and colleges that were normally done ahead of candidates sitting their KCSE have since been scrapped.
