Many students are heartbroken due to the failure to secure university admission. Others are crestfallen because they can’t get the courses they applied for and have to settle for less appealing alternatives.
This is the cutthroat world of public university admissions that has been heavily criticised.
As we report today the soon-to-be scrapped Joint Admissions Board (JAB) has explained how it carries out the process of admitting students to university and it is clear that the problem is capacity.
The number of students who qualify regularly exceed the places available by a wide margin, while JAB has also to consider gender balance and the disadvantaged.
The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service created by the Universities Act will replace JAB, and has a wider mandate that includes admission of candidates to private universities and self-sponsored students in public universities.
There are those who have criticised the scrapping of JAB on the premise that its replacement would likely be riddled with corruption and nepotism.
Problem of space
That is unfair because it is tantamount to judging an institution even before it has got down to work. Perhaps the best thing is for the Commission on University Education, which is the watchdog body for all universities, to push for a review of the admission criteria to see whether it can be improved.
Among the changes envisaged is to subject the private universities to the same stringent qualifying marks as those offered by public universities, especially for courses in medicine, law and engineering. This would set the floor for more linkages between the public and private institutions that could only enrich the learning experience.
But before that happens the problem of space in public universities cannot be wished away.
While the number of universities have increased, they have not kept pace with the availability of qualified teaching staff, and so defining capacity of universities using numbers is wrong.
Quality also matters and in a space where public universities compete with private counterparts for staff, shortages are inevitable. Public universities tend to pay less, and so find it hard to attract and retain experienced lecturers and new talent.
