First state-funded students to enter private universities

Kenya has kicked off its long-awaited plan to have private universities admit government-sponsored students, potentially easing the admissions pressure on state universities, with the first cohort expected to join private institutions this year.

Some of the 124,000 secondary school students who achieved the minimum mark for admission to universities - C+ - in the examination results released last Monday, will now have the option to choose one of Kenya's 26 private universities for degree courses.

The plan, which the government has been pursuing since 2010, opens a new chapter for higher education. Previously, government-funded students could only be admitted to public universities.

The deal will see private universities admitting at least 25,000 extra students in the next two years, easing an admission backlog of 40,000 students that the government has been seeking to end for the past three years. So far, more than half of the backlog has been sorted, meaning that in the next two years the problem should be over.

Last Tuesday Professor David Some, secretary of the Commission for University Education, or CUE, was quoted in local media as saying that the government had already worked out the average cost of each course.

The state would fund students who opted to join private universities up to that limit. Should a university charge more, it would have to foot the bill for the balance.

It is not clear, however, what concessions the government has given private universities, which four years ago made wide-ranging demands if they were to admit government-sponsored students.

Administrators and owners of private universities had asked for incentives to encourage their expansion including tax reductions, soft loans and the elimination of work permit fees for international faculty.

New admissions body

The new shift gained ground with the formation of a new body - the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service, or KUCCPS - which will have representatives from private universities and colleges, a departure from the past when central admissions was the preserve of public universities.

The body, formed last month, effectively replaces the Joint Admissions Board, which had faced growing criticism for placing all top students in public universities and leaving the rest for private institutions and tertiary colleges.

It is expected that KUCCPS will more fairly distribute qualified school-leaving candidates in both public and private universities. The new agency has also been given an extended mandate to admit students to colleges.

The entry of private universities into the fray is expected to ease the burden on the government, which has been struggling to finance public universities to meet growing demand for higher education, especially under 'regular' (state-funded) programmes.

The state has been weighed down by a budget deficit that is expected to hit the US$3.4 billion in the next fiscal year that begins in July - around 25% of the country's annual budget. Below-target government revenues in a challenging economic environment have only made matters worse.

Funding has trailed far behind enrolment growth in public universities, compromising quality as infrastructure remained inadequate and the number of lecturers did not grow in tandem. Over the past five years, enrolments have been rising by at least 40% annually while subsidies have increased by 4% to 5% over the period.