I read a story in a section of the press headlined, ‘minister warns on course duplication’ with interest. More interesting was a reader’s rejoinder the following day saying ‘There are no useless degrees…..”

Education stakeholders are yet to fully understand the place of career guidance and its journey through the life of every individual. Today, if you asked students of careers they know of, they struggle to count to 10, yet colleges and universities offer over 2000 courses!

What has lacked is information on the courses which makes students opt for what is familiar. Question to ponder, do colleges and universities provide the necessary information early enough to help students to make informed choices? Experience shows that often choice of courses is restricted to what students have heard, what their parents know, their friends and loads of speculation about careers that may offer them status and money!

In my opinion colleges and universities have not come to the realization that it's not like yester years when they were few and so they filled their capacity very fast. Besides, students had fewer choices of courses to make from. In an era where there is an explosion of education globally, our Kenyan colleges and universities will either have no students choosing their schools and their courses.

Think of a place like USA where there have over 5000 universities and colleges. How do the students make choices? As early 1920's research findings show that colleges and universities in USA have gone to the students to explain to them about their courses, what they are all about, their benefits and support services they provide.

They have further invested in marketing of their courses to other countries. What with the international career fairs that clutter the country every year! Kenya is one of the destinations that is popular with UK, Canada, USA, Malaysia. Every January to March these universities camp to look for students and further, they have agents who represent them when they return home. They come with goodies and scholarship to top students.

TVET colleges and universities must wake up and smell the coffee! They must go to the students. They must go where their clients are and not their clients coming to them. In order to have fruitful discussion on the ground, the universities should invest in equipping the staff who go to school to be trained on how to create an experience on their courses in the students' mind with relevant information.  In this way, we can pre-empt and reduce incidences of courses not attracting any applicant.

Also, it’s time to think out of the box! It’s not about the teaching of the course but also strategic linkages with the industry, the employer, looking at the gaps that employers have, reviewing their courses, placing students and making transition to the world of smooth!   
We are now living in a global economy and we are not only training for the local market but internationally.

Fortunately, most of this information can be found in the College of Career Guidance and Development that now exposes students to many options that exist post-secondary school. Like a capsule, CAREER AND COLLEGE READINESS COURSE is an online transitional course for youth leaving high school into life after high school. The course is designed to impart skills to anyone aspiring to join tertiary education or any post-secondary training locally or internationally and other post high school options available. It is able to answer questions like; What next after high school? Who am I? How do I know my talents? What are the different types of post high school options? What is College success? What if i don't go to college?  The course takes Four (4) Weeks and has interactive activities to enrich your learning experiences. It will help you discover unlimited possibilities! SEE YOU IN CLASS!