Go to school, study and get a good job, is at least the cliche’ of pep talk introductions that a number of us got from our parents. However, the job part becomes complicated if one does not pursue a career that befits the opportunities present in the Kenyan employment market.
You may have encountered a person, friend or relative who has gone for years without landing a formal job, worse, an interview.
Over the years, courses such as medicine, architecture, engineering, dental surgery, pharmacy, computer science, law, quantity survey, nursing, information technology and real estate have dominated student choices.
This may be attributed to their continued relevance and necessity in the country’s well being and economy.
Since assuming office as Cabinet Secretary for Education, Prof George Magoha has termed a number of courses offered in universities and colleges as useless. He embarked on an initiative to have them scrapped and the funds allocated to their administration diverted elsewhere.
In February 2019, the Commission for University Education (CUE) rejected 133 courses offered by over 20 institutions in the country. This meant that over 10,000 students were forced to discontinue their studies and switch courses, while thousands others in the job market rendered ‘useless’.
The 2018 KCSE candidates shunned a further 98 courses offered in various universities across the country.
“I ask the CUE and individual universities to keep reviewing their curricula to make their programmes more responsive to the changing needs of the country,” Magoha stated on April 16, 2019, during the placement exercise of students by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) at Catholic University of Eastern Africa.
“We have allowed our intellectual capabilities to go to sleep because of other people and we cannot blame those people because they do not know what a university is; we are the ones who know. Why are universities introducing some very funny and irrelevant courses which only attract two to five students? We cannot continue like this and I want to put it clear that when you come to me asking for funding, I will first ask you to show me what you have done,” the Education CS stated.
In September 2020, KUCCPS released a report detailing a number of courses that registered the least applications, noting a declining trend in the number of students pursuing them over the years.
Here is a List of the Least Marketable Courses in Kenya according to KUCCPS data:
- Bachelor of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies
- Bachelor of Science (Aquatic Resource Conservation and development with IT)
- Bachelor of Science (Natural Products)
- Development studies
- Applied linguistics.
- Gender development.
- Translation and interpretation.
- Geographic information science.
- Childcare and protection.
- Theology, youth ministry, and pastoral studies.
- Environmental resource management.
- Environmental planning.
- Animal production.
- Fisheries and aquaculture
- Recreation and leisure management.
- Plant nutrition.
- Botany
- Zoology.
- Agribusiness management.
- Horticulture.
- Wildlife management and conservation.
- Bachelor of business administration
KUCCPS noted that these were courses that received the least applicants in the recent university and college placement exercises.
The Ministry of Education, has however, not advised institutions to stop offering these courses, but maintained that learners seek proper guidance prior to making their choices on college courses.
