The Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba has announced that over 50,000 students who passed the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams and had qualified for university admission were either not placed or did not apply through the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS).

Speaking on July 1, 2025, at Jogoo House in Nairobi during the release of the placement results, Ogamba revealed that 42,000 students chose not to apply while 7,000 applied but were not placed.

This official data comes after the Ministry of Education announced that it has reviewed the cost of university for students and lowered it to between 15 and 40 percent.

They decided to make this revision after improving and updating their testing methods to make it more accurate for checking students’ financial abilities.

Now, when checking finances, they look at factors such as how much the family has previously paid in school fees, family assets and if they applied for the Hustler Fund.

“We are capturing all these in order to place students as close as possible to their actual financial situation. The goal is to make education as affordable and accessible to all,” Ogamba said.

However, for those that applied, placement data shows that the health and education courses were very competitive. A total of 52,725 people applied for programs at Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) with only 25,034 of them being selected.

The most popular program at KMTC was nursing followed by Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Medical Emergency Technician and Community Health.

For education, primary school teaching diplomas was also very popular as it received 20,786 applications against a capacity of 13,823 with only 11,636 getting accepted.

“The students who scored C+ and above, we have 7,640 who were selected to go to TVET institutions other than a university. We have 6,750 who chose to join KMTC and other institutions and primary TTCs,” Ogamba revealed.

The Ministry of Education has urged students to take advantage of the ongoing placement and funding as the KUCCPS portal remains open, and the Higher Education Fund (HEF) portals are also accepting applications.