Private universities want JAB scrapped

Written by Daniel Saenyi Graduands at a past graduation ceremony. The Joint Admissions Board should be dissolved is a mutual feeling among most of the private universities in Bungoma South District. The board that selects and admits students to public universities is not entrenched in the Universities Act, which guides higher education in Kenya, the National Association of Private Universities said. The JAB is not serving its purpose as it is now overwhelmed with many students that it has to leave many of them out of the selection. This year, only 24,000 out of 94,000 students who qualified to join university by attaining a mean grade of C+ in their Form Four exam were admitted by the Board. The rest will have to compete for places in private universities or join public ones as self-sponsored students. These 70,000 students will have to pay much higher fees, and fight the negative perception that they were not qualified to join the university in the first place. According to Mr. James Okeyo Ochieng, the Chief Principal for West Kenya College of Professional Studies, the JAB system should be replaced by a suitable criterion for the selection. He suggested that students should be left to apply on their own and not be selected by universities. Many students who get the minimum University entry points of C+ are mostly left out from universities because they are very many. They should come up with a way to also sort out the students who get these minimum entry points, he said. “The Joint Admission Board serves only seven public universities which can’t serve all the form four leavers. This may lead to some issues of corruption where some parents will have to give bribe for their children to get admitted to public universities,” Said Mr. Ochieng. The Dean of Curriculum for Pamus Teachers college, Mr. Paul Wanjohi also made clear his support for scrapping the system arguing that most students who get admitted to public universities do not get their courses of choice because the board chooses the courses for them. They only join because there is no other way other than joining a private university or as private students. “In my opinion, JAB should be scrapped. This is because it does not give students a chance to pursue their chosen carriers. If the system is to be kept running, it should consider the career courses the students have chosen,” Said Wanjohi. The National Association of Public Universities in Kenya chairman Mr. Simon Gicharu recommended that JAB be replaced by the Central Universities Admissions Committee (CUAC) as provided for in Section 8 of the Universities Act (1985). "This will eliminate discrimination of students in the names of parallel or regular programme or students in private universities who qualify to join university," Said Mr. Gicharu. The private universities also want the Higher Education Loans Board to be renamed as the Higher Education Financing Agency, and its mandate also reviewed to provide loans to all students. Admission of students to private and public universities should be levelled in terms of enrolment and allocation of resources. With this arrangement, students can choose a university of their choice and not dictated by JAB.