KENYA: Call to scrap admissions board

Private universities are calling for the scrapping of the Joint Admissions Board, a move likely to attract protests from public universities, reports Kenfrey Kiberenge for The Standard.

The recommendation was contained in a presentation last week by the National Association of Private Universities in Kenya to the taskforce on educational reforms, sittings at the Kenya Institute of Education in Nairobi. Association Chair Simon Gicharu argued that the selection and admission of students to public universities by the Joint Admissions Board (JA) was not anchored in the Universities Act.

"JAB is also not representative and only serves the seven public universities, leaving out 23 private [institutions] and parallel programme students," said Gicharu, who recommended that JAB be replaced by the Central Universities Admissions Committee. He told the taskforce that private universities were increasingly becoming institutions of choice for top students: "In relative terms, JAB only caters for about one-third of the total enrolment in each public university," he said.
Full report on The Standard site