Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service warns of fraudsters in admissions

Students who sat last year's Form Four examinations have been asked to look out for fraudsters out to con them using false university admissions.

Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) Chief Executive Officer John Muraguri said his organisation is the only one mandated with student placement.

"We warn them that our services are free and transparent and anybody asking for money is definitely not an employee of KUCCPS," he said in his office.

Muraguri said a text message is in circulation saying the KUCCPS has officially launched a cellphone number  where all applicants can confirm their admission details. "This is fraud and we ask parents and students to be wary," said Muraguri.

The text reads: "To all legible applicants please feed your details as follows: Dial*140* the last digits of your index number not including your school code, then the cell phone number..."
The SMS says each text is charged Sh10.

Yesterday, the CEO said all candidates would know their courses by August 15.

He also explained that no student who successfully applied for a degree course, would be assigned to a diploma course if they complied with the second revision deadlines.

"This year we have had several students who scored A and A- (minus) missing out completely on the highly competitive courses. Those who scored this grade and chose diploma courses at the end were given the diploma courses," said Muraguri.

Muaraguri said the candidates were however given an opportunity to revise the courses during the second revision process that took place between June 26 and July 11.

"Those who got diplomas and revised their courses will be given degree courses. So there is no cause for alarm because this process is highly automated," he said. "We assume those who did not revise got the courses they wanted and the service cannot make choices for them."

High grades

Muraguri was responding to calls by parents who said their children who scored high grades have been given diploma courses.

He said of the 67,048 candidates who applied for the courses, 56,251 were placed in either diploma or degree courses during the first round of the process. "Only 10,797 were not placed in any programme," said Muraguri.
"We are cleaning data and validating it so that we can start processing it and placing the students," he said.

The CEO said the KUCCPS technical team would then meet to look at the analysis that would be sent to the board for approval.

"After this we shall call the university vice chancellors and college principals to take them through the process followed and also give them the list of admitted students," said Muraguri.

The Standard came across a case where a student who scored an A of 82 points failed to secure a course.

The student's first choice was Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, offered at the University of Nairobi (UoN), Jomo Kenyatta University of Science or Technology (JKUAT) and Technical University of Kenya (TUK).

However, the student failed to secure the first course in all the three places as the cluster weight was higher than his.

At the UoN, the cluster weight was 44.899 yet the student's cluster weight was 42.904.

The cluster weight for the same course at JKUAT and TUK was 44.866 and 43.883 respectively.

The student's second choice of study was architecture at TUK but the cluster points for this was 44.051.

The third was quantity surveying at JKUAT but the cluster points for the course was 43.686.

The sixth and final choice of the student was Petroleum Engineering at Kenyatta University. But he also missed out on this as the cluster points here stood at 43.793.

This means the student who scored a straight A did not get any course after the first round of the placement.

The second case is also of a student who scored an A of 82 points. He also failed to get the first choice, architectural studies, at the UoN.

He also failed to secure the same course at TUK. However, he was placed at the third choice, which was a diploma course offered at Kabete Technical Training Institute.