KUCCPS: More students who qualify for degree courses are opting for TVET
An increasing number of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) holders who qualify for degree programmes are opting to apply for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) opportunities. This is a trend that Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) has observed in the last two years.
Addressing the 2nd Biennial University Funding Conference that took place on 26th and 27th February 2025 in Naivasha, Dr. Wahome highlighted the trends.
“We have had more students going for the medical courses, those who qualify for universities. We have seen students with C + and above going for nursing, clinical medicine, teaching. Last week, we put out advertisements for Diploma in Law; again we saw that most of the students who applied were those with C + and above.”
Other highlights of the CEO’s presentation at the conference
1. Male students dominate science while female students dominate arts
“We still have more male students taking up the science programmes, more female students are going for law and other art programmes, and looking at where we are as a country the number of those going for TVET courses is going up.”
2. Merit is the primary consideration
“We consider merit as the most important aspect when we are placing students. We have developed a system within the institution, a computer system that once we get KNEC results we rank all the students depending on the programmes they have selected. Once they have been ranked, the last student who is ranked in that programme forms what people know as the cut offs … They ask: how do you come up with the cut offs? We do not determine the cut offs. The number of students selecting a programme and the capacity determine the cut offs.”
3. KUCCPS places students to over 400 institutions
“Currently we are placing students in over 400 institutions. We have 70 universities; we have 90 KMTCs and – the latest – we have over 300 TVET institutions which are all government institutions; we have some within the Ministry of Education and some are within other line Ministries. In total, we are working with over 18 ministries. We also place students in the teacher training colleges. We have 35 teacher training colleges. These are just the public ones. Still, there is a demand that we should place students in private teacher colleges and private TVET institutions. So our mandate is quite heavy and we are still getting more and more institutions joining us.”
4. Number of candidates qualifying for degree courses going up but Kenyan universities have enough capacity
“Last year we had over 960,000 students finishing KCSE examinations, with 246,000 meeting the minimum entry requirement. The number of those getting C + and above has gone up, meaning the population in the university is going up. The question is that do we have enough capacity in the local universities to take in the students? And the answer is yes. We do not have a shortage of capacities. In fact, when we look at the declared capacities, we still have over 100,000 capacities that can be filled. We need to target other curricula; students who are taking other forms of examination not just the KCSE. We have international curricula, the IGCSE, that we have not targeted yet in terms of encouraging them to take up courses within our local public universities.”
5. KUCCPS’ internally developed placement platform can handle as many institutions as possible
“The Placement Service has a platform that can be able to serve as many institutions as possible. The platform is internally developed by our own Kenyan officers; is not a procured platform, and that shows we have the right capacity in this country. That is a platform that also helps institutions to validate that the students they are taking up actually meet the minimum requirements that the institutions want.
Note: The conference was organised by Universities Fund and attended by higher education stakeholders including Vice-Chancellors, Members of the National Assembly Departmental Committee on Education, representatives of other government agencies, and private sector entities. The Education Cabinet Secretary Mr. Julius Migos Ogamba, was represented by Dr. Beatrice Muganda Inyangala, the Principal Secretary, State Department for Higher Education and Research.