Some 42,868 students out of the 244,563 who qualified for admission to universities after sitting the 2024 KCSE did not apply for placement through the placement agency (KUCCPS).

This represents about 17 per cent of the candidates who attained the minimum university entry grade of C+. 

Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba communicated this information two weeks ago, sparking agreement among analysts that university education no longer counts, that there’s little difference between university and middle-level college education.

The common thread suggests this represents a triumph for TVET against university education. 

I don’t buy this warped argument or correlation. We must resist the temptation to set TVET against university education. 

The alleged duality between TVET and university education is wrong. Each serves different but complementary purposes.

In the world of work, both need each other to maximise a society’s technical capabilities and potential at various levels. 

Every society requires a repertoire of knowledge, abilities and skills to deal with changing issues, problems, challenges and crises of varying dimensions and complexities.

Members need capabilities of varying depth, breadth and complexity to handle situations as they arise. 

Middle-level colleges impart capabilities matching the weight of specific issues and problems.

University education develops similar capabilities but of a superior dimension, complexity or sophistication. The former is mainly for the maintenance of systems or fixing defects in established systems.

The latter is for improvements in established systems or rethinking new systems entirely. 

Former Yale University president Richard Levin argued that world-class universities have four functions: advancing human knowledge of nature and culture; providing the finest training to next-generation scholars; delivering outstanding undergraduate and professional education for future leaders; and providing an ideal context for educating graduates with intellectual breadth and critical-thinking skills to solve problems, innovate, and lead. 

Middle-level colleges provide technical and vocational training needed for operations at middle and lower institutional levels.

University education should provide men and women with the capacity for conceptual and strategic thinking to solve seemingly intractable problems with requisite knowledge and leadership. 

If we let universities succumb to the pure demands of the economy or job market, we inevitably downgrade the intellectual and moral rigour that university education stands for.

The net effect is little difference between undergraduate students and those who opted for middle-level colleges, regardless of admission qualifications. 

Universities give us leaders – generals, not constables. They give us men and women with the capacity to grow into challenging leadership roles.

We don’t want people prepared to manage a shop to run a supermarket. It will collapse. 

We should encourage those who have demonstrated the capacity to undertake university education to take it.

University education isn’t for everybody. It exists for those who have demonstrated intellectual abilities to undertake rigorous academic, vocational and professional programmes. 

We must ensure the minimum number qualifying for university education exceeds 30 per cent by international standards.

Far less than 30 per cent of KCSE candidates since 2016 have attained C+, which should concern policy and opinion leaders. 

The writer is a Communication Specialist