Placement Practices That Are Costly To Students’ Dream Career According To KUCCPS.
Kenya University and Colleges Central Placement Services have exposed some of the placement practices that are costing students their dream jobs despite having qualified to pursue these courses.
1. Poor choices
Students make poor choices during course selection due to pressure from parents or their colleagues and the desire to study at big universities.
The students also fail to weigh competition for some courses carefully making them choose poorly.
Students who pass their KCSE examination well with colourful scores may end up missing out on the first selection/ placement as they make poor choices.
They choose highly competitive courses only again at top universities leaving out other options.
2. Failure to compare own scores with national performance.
It is advisable to compare your performance with the nationwide performance as this will give you the bearing on course selection.
The placement exercise begins with colleges and universities announcing available vacancies in each area. Vetting is done to confirm if the vacancies are available.
The Kuccps committee then prepares a merit list for each faculty in every university and college. Comparing your scores with national performance will guide you when making your choice as it will dictate whether to go for highly competitive courses or not.
3. Application process
This is where most learners go wrong. When filling the available slots during the application, the learners only concentrate on the first three courses and for the other slots, they only fill the gaps with any course which are not of their preference.
This has a serious impact because if they fail to qualify in any of the first three courses, they will be placed in any other which they qualify as long as it is appearing on their application.
4. Student’s preference
During placement exercises, students preference plays a key role. For example, if you scored an A plain and wish to pursue medicine in Nairobi university the committee will try to place you there.
But if you miss out due to high competition, even if you qualify to do medicine in another university, you will not be placed. Someone who scored an A minus and selected Kenyatta university as their preference will be placed and you will be left out.
Priority is given to those who made it to be their preference or first choice during application.
However, after missing out on the first placement you can always revise your selection so that you can get a chance.
Unfortunately, if all the available vacancies on highly competitive programmes have been filled during the first placement you will be forced to look for other alternatives.
