Sigh of relief to students joining university
There will be no student who will be sent away from enrolling in public universities for the first time for not paying the fees and the admissions deadlines will be flexible to accommodate all applicants.
Ezekiel Machogu, the secretary to the cabinet for education, said the choice was made after it became apparent that the loan and scholarship applications were not proceeding as expected.
According to Machogu, universities have been ordered to unconditionally admit all students while financing data is analyzed and students are allocated accordingly.
On Thursday, MPs requested Machogu to guarantee that errors in the loan and scholarship application systems won’t be utilized to penalize students.
Machogu sent a directive dated August 24 to all vice chancellors of public universities and principals of constituent colleges, instructing them to admit all students, following his appearance before the National Assembly Education Committee.
In the interim, while their funding applications are being processed, “universities and colleges shall admit all students from the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) cohort as placed by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS),” Machogu said.
Additionally, the CS instructed all universities and institutions to set up a help desk to assist first-year students who might want assistance with their financing applications.
Parents and students can now breathe a sigh of relief after months of anguish with recurrent system issues that threatened to prevent many from receiving funds.
The application procedure, according to students, is drawn out, difficult, and frequently unsuccessful, which caused many of them to take up to two weeks to finish.Students went on to say that the procedure was excessively complicated because it needed sophisticated computer knowledge.
Applicants in remote areas with poor internet access and those with limited computer proficiency are particularly impacted.
Those without national identity cards have struggled as well because it is difficult to access the application portal. A digital signature is necessary at some point, however many students don’t comply as they do not know how to navigate around the requirement as opening on universities nears.
Sigh of relief to students joining university
