Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has assured students who were unable to apply for scholarships and loans under the new university funding model that his ministry would resolve the issue in the coming days.
Machogu, while addressing the plenary of the National Assembly on Thursday, stated that the challenges the students faced stemmed from invalidated National Identification Cards and the Integrated Personnel Registration System (IPRS).
A number of students with newly acquired IDs and IPRS were locked out of the university fund portal, thus barring them from accessing the funds.
In an effort to address the delays necessitated by the system hitches, Machogu noted that he was coordinating with his Interior counterpart, Kithure Kindiki, to integrate the newly acquired IDs and IPRS numbers into the university system.
According to Machogu, the students who have been locked out will soon be asked to reapply for funding opportunities since the process will be complete within one week.
"The intervening processes are undergoing so as to ensure that the IPRS are reviewed to support and accommodate the Identity Card Number validation requests during this application period," Machogu stated.
Despite Machogu's interventions, students are still in a precarious position since the application window, which opened on July 31, is set to close on September 7. Reports indicate that the Ministry of Education is yet to achieve the desired outcome.
"It is anticipated that about 265,614 students will make applications for funding. As at the date hereof, 65,328 applications had been made," Machogu disclosed.
The CS added that the current system's Integrated Personnel Registration System can only validate the old National Identity Card Numbers of the applicants, parents and guarantors.
"Since the start of the application process, it has been noted that the system takes significantly longer to validate the Identity Card Numbers.
"At times, the system experiences downtimes for several hours, thereby hindering the registration and application process," Machogu acknowledged.
"In order to operationalise the model, the Higher Education Loans Board, the Universities Fund, the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service and the State Department for Technical, Vocational Education and Training worked together to develop and deploy a centralised online portal for the registration and application for scholarships, loans and bursaries by students in tertiary education institutions," Machogu added.
The MPs, however, noted that the interventions came late since many universities are set to begin their terms, and there are concerns about students being required to report after having made adequate financial arrangements.
President William Ruto unveiled the New Higher Education Funding Model on May 3 at State House, Nairobi.
The new model is a needs-based and student-centred funding system that categorises students into four categories based on their household income.
Students under the category of vulnerable will receive full scholarships, and needy ones will get partial scholarships. While less needy students will get long-term loans.
