By Mary Kamande
She had looked forward to joining the university and when she passed her 2010 KCSE exams, Nyambura was happy that her dream was shaping up.
The Government decision that she and her colleagues wouldn’t have to wait for two years to join the university through the Joint Admissions Board was good news.
And about five months after the release of her results, Nyambura was enrolled in Kenyatta University for undergraduate course.
However, owing to the double intake that saw the 2010 and 2009 KCSE candidates enrolled at the same time, she would miss on the university accommodation. For a whole semester, she would commute from her relative’s house.
Luckily, in her second semester, she secured varsity accommodation as most of students in other grades were away for long vacation. However, her luck was shortlived. When colleagues resumed, she lost the accommodationand, together with her roommates had to rent a room at the nearby market (popularly known as KM).
Mixed blessing
Though accommodation at KM was considered a better option, it came with some sacrifices. They could not visit the library in the evening for security reasons.
Nyambura and thousands of other varsity students now describe the double intake programme as a mixed blessing: Though it reduced the transition period, it came with challenges to parents, students and other sector stakeholders.
Initially, students who joined universities in the self-sponsored module immediately after their KCSE results would be in their second year by the time their JAB counterparts enrolled for first year.
Although double intake was meant to clear an admission backlog which occurred in the 1990/1991 academic year when the first 8-4-4 Form Fours graduated, not many are happy with the new development as they say only the enrolment has been increased with infrastructure and human resource still stagnated.
Rachel Mwikali, a student at Kenyatta University, says although the double intake was welcome, little has been done to match the increased enrolment with the provision of infrastructure and other resources at universities.
She says the resources are congested with some being overstretched beyond capacity. She says lecture halls are filled to capacity and getting access to library and computer lab resources are often a tough task.
The alternatives
Her sentiments are echoed by Denis Rapenda of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, who claims to have witnessed lectures conducted under trees due to shortage of rooms and inadequate staff to attend to increased number of students.
Rapenda, who is the university students’ organisation secretarygeneral, says most students in public universities under the double intake have no accommodation at the institutions.
“Most first year students have no accommodation and have been forced to seek it outside the colleges. The alternative accommodation is often more expensive than even the tuition fees we pay,” he says, adding that most of the Government-sponsored students can ill afford rent outside the university, forcing them to group up to afford the high rent.
