Students’ agony as loans request
portal crashes

A crisis is looming ahead of the opening of universities next week after the loans and scholarships application portal crashed.

Yesterday, Members of Parliament raised concerns over the funding status for students under the new university fees model, expressing fears that students who fail to access the loans and scholarships could be locked out when the universities open next week.

However, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu told members of the National Assembly’s Education Committee that no student will be sent back home when they report for admission.

“All students who have been placed will be eligible to apply for funding. Universities start admissions on August 24 to September 25. Universities have been requested to give students one month to process loans and scholarships from the opening date,” the CS told the committee.

30 per cent success

Amidst funding delays, public universities have accumulated a huge debt portfolio consisting of unpaid salaries, unremitted statutory deductions, bank and Sacco loans and unpaid suppliers.
In total, public universities were indebted up to Sh61 billion as at June 23, a debt which continues to grow.

But Machogu said a circular will soon be issued to all universities on the funding situation, noting that so far only 30 per cent of university entrants have successfully applied for funding.

As at August 23, the CS said, applications have continued to come through and some 75,272 university and TVET students had made successful applications.

He stated that applications for funding will close on September 7, which will then be followed by verification of applications for seven days. Allocation of scholarships will take a day while disbursement will be based on opening dates.

He also sought to assure that the system is being rectified to allow higher capacity of students to apply at the same time.

According to the Ministry, some of the issues relating to online portal include Integrated Population Registration Database System (IPRS) validation for applicants, parents, and guarantors.

Undeclared courses

Applicants say the system takes too long to validate IDs and is at times completely down for several hours and they cannot register at the portal in order to proceed with the applications.

Owing to this issue, the identification number takes a long time to validate or does not validate at all and applicants cannot register at the application portal.

Similarly, newly acquired ID numbers are not readily available in the system thus hindering application progress.

Machogu has said that the IPRS will review their systems to accommodate the high traffic flowing through the portal during this application period.

“Newly acquired Ids will be updated in the IPRS system from National Registration Bureau (NRB). The Ministry has already written to the Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Interior and National Administration to address the issue,” he assured.

There have also been cases of undeclared courses at Kenya Universities Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) by institutions.

In this case, students have admission letters with courses not declared with KUCCPS portal hence cannot be found in the application portal during application.

The undeclared courses are not available in the portal hence the students cannot complete the application. Institutions are to update all courses and their costs with KUCCPS August 28,” the CS told the committee.

Machogu said the huge traffic in the application portal caused by numerous concurrent applications exacerbated this week because some institutions are due to commence the academic year 2023/2024.

Index number

He also said that students without a national identity card will be required to apply for scholarships and loans with their Kenya Certificate Secondary Education (KCSE) index number and birth certificate.
Once the student is categorized under the new model, the CS said that the scholarship will be awarded and sent to university or college while the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) loan will be set aside to finance them as soon as they submit their IDs.

“Universities and colleges have been advised accordingly on the arrangement and are expected to admit the students. The provision of the loan is a contractual arrangement between HELB and the student,” he explained.

“Since the law does not allow contracts with minors, the loans for those without IDs will not be provided. The students falling under this category are approximately 1,000 and from experience, these students will receive their IDs within their first year of study.”

The CS said that the total funding requirement for the new model is Sh39.4 billion this financial year and already, the government had increased resources by 12.5 billion and the 18.6 billion funding gap expected during the first Supplementary budget.

For continuing students, he said, they had been funded at Sh34.1 billion which is 42.6 per cent of the Differentiated Unit Cost (DUC) and the Ministry is seeking an additional 60 per cent.
This, he said, will require an additional Sh11.1 billion to enable the universities to meet costs of salaries and operational expenses.