Students should look beyond medical courses
The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement System (KUCCPS) has opened its application portal for the 2022 KCSE candidates to revise their course choices and submit their new choices for consideration in placement in universities and colleges published in their portal. The application, which is termed the first revision, is set to run up until June 7, a period of three weeks. It was officially opened by the CS for Education, Mr Ezekiel Machogu at the University of Nairobi. The 2022 candidates have had to wait for close to three months after the KCSE 2022 results were out for this moment. To some, this may be a moment of reaping what they had sown for the four years in secondary school but to some, this is always a moment of grief. Many a time, students have always dreamt of becoming doctors or taking up courses that are related to the medical field. This has seen this dream not fulfilled owing to the student’s cluster points as calculated by the placement body against the required cut-off points for a particular medical course at a university. Medical courses have always attracted a huge number of applicants and it is for this reason that the cut-off points for any medical-related course have always been high. A student, for example, who may want to apply for a bachelor's degree in medicine, will have to be above the 45.106 cut-off points for this particular programme at the University of Nairobi. Students should look beyond medical courses. The belief that medical courses are more marketable than others should not be cultivated in this generation. Students should have an open mind and look for courses that will seek to answer the challenges society is facing today. Students should consider courses in fields such as technology due to the growing rise in technology advancements, fields such as engineering, course in disaster and conflict management, and a course in environmental studies to help in addressing the ongoing climate change being experienced in the world, fields such as education to help solve the country’s crisis in the education sector while rolling the Competency-Based Curriculum. These students have a wide variety of courses to choose from including but not limited to the above-mentioned fields of study. It is therefore up to the students currently choosing their courses for consideration in a placement to look beyond the medical courses, have open minds and choose courses that will prove to be of great importance in solving the challenges in society.