University of Nairobi Deregisters over 30,000 Students

The University of Nairobi (UoN) has deregistered over 30,000 students in a clean-up exercise mainly targeting learners who have overstayed. 

The deregistration exercise kicked off last year after the University’s Senate approved Guidelines for Student Progression 2020, which provides for termination of students’ progression and deregistration. 

The affected students include those whose studentship has expired, those whose studentship has been terminated by expulsion or discontinuation, those with unexplained failure to transit to the next level, and those who interrupted their studentship by temporary withdrawal, deferment, or suspension.

The clean-up exercise has seen the student population at the country’s oldest and largest public university drop to 50,000.

“We started that exercise mid last year and we took through Senate the names of those who had overstayed, those who are not active and by the time we were closing the year in December, we had expunged slightly above 30,000,” UoN Vice-Chancellor Prof. Stephen Kiama told Business Daily.

He added: “We have to ensure that we have active students. If you have not been active we ought to remove you from our system so that we focus on those who have registered and are in school.”

Prof. Kiama defended the exercise saying it is essential to planning and resource allocation.

“Some students register, do one course then disappear but do not notify us of their whereabouts. We are combing through the system because we need to plan for the active students,” he said.

The university will off the deregistered learners a chance to be re-admitted.