The Kenyan Universities and Colleges Placement Services (KUCCPS) is considering dropping some courses over a looming funding crisis.
Speaking on Thursday, February 23, KUCCPS Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Agnes Wahome explained that low enrollment numbers in some programmes run the government into losses.
"We are engaging with universities in whether or not we need to continue some of our programmes based on data.
"In some institutions, you find five lecturers and four students, and we wonder if that is the best use for our finances," Wahome stated.
Tasked with formulating and advising the government on programmes, Wahome noted that KUCCPS would also evaluate the competition rate of all students per course across universities and colleges.
Furthermore, she raised concerns about how students legible to join universities scramble for courses such as law and ignore courses in sectors that receive the most funding in the country's budget.
"We have programmes that respond to agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), housing and healthcare but do not fill them to capacity. To what extent are we putting our money in the direction the country is going?" She asked.
Wahome also raised concerns about the rising number of students qualifying to join universities under government sponsorship amid a financial crisis.
"We had 894,000 this year and the number will jump to one million in two years. The government cannot continue funding all these students so we need to look at other funding models," she remarked.
The KUCCPS boss further explained the process behind students' placement to higher learning institutions.
She explained that the body uses students' data from the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) and university data.
We sent this data to the University Funding Board (UFB), which compares the number of applications to the slots available in each institution and determines how many students are admitted per campus.
The Service also liaises with the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) and the State Department of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to determine the funding of students in universities, colleges and TVET institutions.
