The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) has been given a 7-day ultimatum to answer an inquiry over technical glitches experienced on its portal, which has made it hard for some students to access results.
In a letter addressed to KUCCPS Chief Executive Agnes Wahome dated Thursday, August 3, the Office of the Ombudsman raised pertinent issues regarding the roll-out of the university placement results.
The office noted that candidates who sat for their national examinations in 2022 could only access their placement information via a short message service (SMS) charging Ksh25 per text.
The concern was first raised by concerned users user who noted that they lacked any other free means to access the information, whether online or offline.
"The Commission's (Ombudsman) attention has been drawn to reports indicating that your institution released the placement results for students who applied to join universities and colleges in Kenya for the year 2022 but access to such important information is restricted to short message service (SMS) whereof the costs per SMS is Ksh25," noted the letter.
"The Access to Information Commissioner engaged your Office on the foregoing whereby your office stated that the system of access to individual results by each student was working."
The Office of the Ombudsman further revealed that it conducted its own investigation and found that there was no information on how students could access the placement information on the website or know the alternative ways in which such information could be accessed without incurring unnecessary costs.
"To comply with the obligation on proactive disclosure of information, your institution is expected to have availed adequate guiding information on the alternative access procedures on your website or any other media (online or otherwise) in addition to the information on SMS access," added the statement.
"This is to request you to respond to the foregoing concerns as well as inform the Commission of the measures initiated by your Institution to ensure full compliance within seven days from the date hereof."
Earlier, students had complained that they can only access the placement information through SMS. The information was also inadequate since it only showed the course and institution a candidate had been admitted to.
On the portal, students also reported being unable to access letters to their respective institutions of admission.
Some students also complained that they were paired to pursue courses way beneath their cluster points. For instance, a Pangani Girls alumni with A- (minus) grade was admitted to pursue a diploma in nutrition at Kiambu Institute.
KUCCPS noted that 285,167 students made applications for placement in 69 universities, 210 TVET institutions and three Secondary Teacher Training Colleges.
Shockingly, 23,125 who qualified for degree programmes did not make applications while 136,592 did not apply for diploma courses. There are 483, 457 vacant spaces across universities and TVETs.
