Hostel crisis bites as freshers flood Maseno and JKUAT Campuses

As many universities begin to receive first-year students, it seems the accommodation crisis is worsening. The number of students being admitted to university is on the rise, yet the hostels available to them have not been increased.

For freshers at Maseno University, the situation is quite dire. Most of them were alarmed at the distance from the hostels to the university upon reporting. The few who managed to secure accommodation in the university hostels had to contend with congestion. Some rooms had as many as 11 students living together, with only a single bathroom and toilet, according to one first-year student.

“Hostel allocation is done on a first come, first served basis,” says Dan Masa from the office of the Registrar, Academics at Maseno University.

“We have admitted most of the 4,800 students joining university. Since the university can only host about 4,000 of them, the rest will be forced to find accommodation outside the university,” he said.

This appears to be the same case in other universities across the country. The Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology’s office of Academic Affairs admitted that there are only 1,000 spaces available in the main campus, while the university has admitted close to 10,000 students across in all its campuses.

With most universities now embracing online systems for room allocation, students, especially those in second and third year, must now consider alternatives to living within campus.

This is however proving to be a nightmare for parents, as the risk of losing their university-going children to alcoholism, prostitution, crime and other vices  increases drastically when comrades reside out of campus.

Readers will recall incidents splashed in the media of numerous female students who were raped or found murdered in privately-owned hostels and of a male university student who was arrested with firearms in his room outside the university.