- Jonathan argues that many students routinely sacrifice their intended career paths in pursuit of prestige, choosing well-known urban universities over those that offer identical programmes with lower cluster-point thresholds.
- Because demand, not academic quality, drives up cluster points at the famous universities, high-performing students aiming for competitive courses often miss out simply because they refuse to consider the same course elsewhere and end up settling for unrelated degrees at a prestigious institution rather than their dream course at a lesser-known one.
Every year, thousands of students compete for admission to Kenya’s most prestigious public universities, believing that studying at well-known institutions guarantees better opportunities. This growing preference for universities such as the University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenyatta University (KU) and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) has seen many learners overlook accredited universities that offer the same academic programmes.
The trend was evident during the 2026 university placement, where Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Migos Ogamba announced that 293,869 students had secured placement into various institutions of higher learning. Of these, 202,133 were admitted to degree programmes, 28,246 joined the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC), while others secured places in diploma programmes and the Kenya Utalii College.
Students tend to show much of their interest in the most publicly known universities, forgetting that the same course offered at the university in the village area is the same as the universities in the urban area, same studies, only the infrastructure may differ
Universities such as UoN, KU, JKUAT, TUK often have cluster points that tend to be higher than universities such as South Eastern Kenya University (SEKU), Technical University of Mombasa (TUM), Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUSST); not necessarily that such universities offer better programmes, but it’s due to the high number of students aspiring to be there
Students make major mistakes by doing courses that they did not dream of just because they wanted to be students of publicly known universities. For instance, a student may be very passionate about nursing and other medical related course, however fails to do such courses in a local university, ending up doing Arts at the University of Nairobi
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Every year, students score A, A-, B+, but miss doing better courses such as medicine in universities outside Nairobi simply because they insisted on doing such courses within Nairobi, which ends up affecting their cluster points, eliminating them or leaving them with an opportunity in such a university due to an high number of students aspiring to be admitted there.
Additionally, some students are left out with limited options and courses since they miss the first placement. They often end up doing courses such as Bachelor of Arts, criminology, project management, public relations and other courses that were not their favourite
Students also make mistakes in assumptions of inter-institution transfers and changing of their preferred courses. However, this is not the case; some courses, such as medicine, nursing and other medical-related courses, are extremely competitive, hence getting an institution makes it difficult for the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Services (KUCCPS) to grant you one
Students should learn to choose their courses well, and the strategic location of a university should not be the result of learners failing to attain their dream jobs and courses.
By Jonathan Mwinzi
Jonathan Mwinzi is a student at Multimedia University of Kenya (MMU)
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