The Problem with Public Universities Salaries

Union officials

Nairobi; Kenya: The university strike over salaries is over. Lecturers have gone back to class, the rest to their workstations. If history is a guide, the truce is merely a strategic retreat before another battle. Soon drumbeats of war will be sounded for another night of long knives. The frequent high-octane skirmishes over university salaries have become toxic to the nation and disruptive to academic programs. So what is wrong with our university salaries? How can the problem be ameliorated once and for all?

The discontent over university salaries stems from a triumvirate of three inter-related factors: market conditions, merit pay and equity. The failure to resolve the contradictions arising from these issues only serves to amplify the stakes in union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and ensures the unions and universities are locked eternal combat. Key to resolving the incessant battle is moderating the enormous influence of CBAs in compensation enhancement in public universities.

No doubt, trade unions play a crucial role in setting the lower and upper limits of university salaries.  Unions have a good grasp of the macro-and micro-economic conditions affecting the purchasing power of their member's income.  The 33% salary and 17% housing allowance increase negotiated by UASU, KUSU and KUDHEIHA shows the dexterity of the unions in cushioning their members from the deleterious effects of inflation. All said, union-negotiated cost-of-living salary adjustment should only account for one-third compensation adjustment.

            However, unions are very poor readers of merit pay systems in universities. Due to the stranglehold of CBA, Lecturers and professors in the same grade earn similar salaries despite differing levels of productivity. A highly productive professor or lecturer will pretty earn the same salary as their deadwood counterparts, longevity in rank being the only condition salary increments. To reward merit and mollify the enormous influence of CBA, university mandarins need to devise annual pay-for-performance salary increases weighted in accordance with teaching, scholarship and community engagement.

            Since our universities source additional revenues from the marketplace, it is only realistic that salaries reflect the realities of the marketplace. Under CBA agreements, all professors and lecturers in the same rank command similar salaries though the costs of training, recruiting and retaining these academics vary considerably by discipline. Lectures and professors of medicine cost more to train, recruit and retain at the university than is with colleagues in humanities and social sciences.  A cardio-thoracic professor can generate millions in research grants than is possible with a professor of history, philosophy or Kiswahili.  So why should their base pay be comparable?

            The same policies should apply for university executives. During the recent industrial fracas, vice-chancellors were reported to have illegally awarded themselves a 100% salary hike. Why should VCs at nascent institutions like Karatina, Kisii, Chuka command the same pay as leaders in complex urban universities like Nairobi and Kenyatta? The dexterity and mental energies required to run the latter far outweighs the former. Policy guidance from the Commission on University Education and the state education office will be invaluable in this regard. 

            Permanent ceasefire will not be possible without a democratization of budget making in the universities. Union allegations of high-level corruption at the universities and the strike by Kisii University students over fee increments show how opaque the university budgets have become. If universities can publicize mundane activities like cultural shows, high profile visits and gate openings, they can at least share budget information with their constituents as national and county governments do.  They could borrow from US institutions where budgets are posted online and university presidents give annual state of the university address. Further, proposals for fee increase are exhaustively discussed with students before implementation.

 

*Ishmael I. Munene, PhD, formerly of the University of Nairobi, is a professor of Higher Education and Educational Research at Northern Arizona University. He can be reached at: [email protected]