More than 50,000 students who qualified to join universities and colleges this year failed to apply for placement, raising concern within the Ministry of Education. While over 42,000 of these students did not submit any application at all, 7,000 applied but were not placed.

According to the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), the students had attained the required C+ grade or above but chose to pursue alternative routes or did not engage with the placement process.

This comes even as the government says it has cut the cost of university education by up to 40 percent to make higher learning more accessible.

CS Julius Ogambo explained that a number of students who qualified for university opted for other education paths.

"The students who scored C+ and above, we have 7,640 who elected to go to TVET institutions other than university. We have 6,750 who chose to join KMTC and other institutions and primary TTCs," he said.

The placement data also shows that engineering and medicine remained the top preferences among those who applied.

However, there has been a notable rise in interest in other fields such as teaching, with 20,786 applications submitted for primary school teaching diploma courses. These courses had a total capacity of 13,823, and 11,636 applicants were placed.

Kenya Medical Training Colleges (KMTCs) also drew strong interest, with 52,725 students applying for various programmes. Of those, only 25,034 were placed.

"Other KMTC programmes that are in high demand are Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Medical Emergency Technician and Community Health, among others," said Dr Ogambo. Among the 25,034 students placed in KMTCs were 6,750 students who scored C+ and above in the 2024 KCSE.

To address the high number of unplaced students, the KUCCPS portal remains open for further applications. The government has also opened the Higher Education Fund portal for students to apply for financial support.

In a move to ease the burden on learners and their families, the Ministry of Education has revised the means testing tools to better reflect a student’s actual financial situation. Factors such as previous school fees paid, family farm size, medical expenses, and even Hustler Fund loan applications are now being considered in determining financial need.

"We are capturing all these in order to place students as close as possible to their actual financial situation. The goal is to make education as affordable and accessible to all," said Dr Julius Ogambo.