By Kisemei Mutisya
Kenya: Since the early 1980s, government thanks to pressure from International Monetary Fund and World Bank replaced the idea of society with the idea of the market.
This was more evident in the field of higher education where institutions of higher learning grew by leaps and bounds.
Along with the idea of rolling back the State and undermining the welfare system that defined the post-colonial State during the nationalist phase, university education was commodified to produce goods with market value only.
That means knowledge became a commodity with market price and an investment. In Kenya, public universities out of pressure from limited state funding hurriedly introduced the parallel learning programmes otherwise known as the module two learning to generate alternative learning for the public universities already experiencing massive financial cuttings.
Since then, university education in Kenya was commercialised and acquired a new market identity of its own. Private universities sprang up with no sound policies of ensuring quality control and accreditation.
From a handful of public universities, the country now boasts a substantial number of public and private universities. The demand has, however, not balanced the supply side leaving many qualified students without access to higher education.
It is, however, the management, acquisition of academic staff, staff development, dilapidated infrastructure and quality assurance aspects that have come to haunt the Kenya’s higher education.
Just this week, The Standard daily newspaper carried a story about the crises at the Presbyterian University of East Africa. The university is reportedly facing numerous challenges, a beneath market university struggling to find its feet.
What is more and perhaps shocking is the revelation that the university cooks grades after failing to pay the contingent faculty especially the adjunct faculty for years. The rot runs deeper and depressing.
However, what is happening at the Presbyterian University of East Africa is not new or specific to the university as the vice runs deeper in all private and public universities as they seek to rake in profits through rent seeking. The crises at Presbyterian university need to be understood and explained in the context of neoliberal globalisation and pressures of globalisation.
As the State turns the other way by reducing public funding, the universities are privy to the dangers and also advantages of having a State that is indifferent to higher education.
For example, what is the Commission for University Education doing to ensure quality control mechanisms are in place? Why was the university not closed to prevent it from fleecing parents and students? Why has no one been arrested despite the crises being in the public domain?
When the Universities audit report was released a month ago, I sought a copy from the Commission for University Education in vain but somehow managed to secure one through personal contacts.
Twin tyranny
The report is as revealing as it is shocking in its findings. Although not as detailed as academic studies done at the universities of Makerere and Cape Town, it points at the need to restructure and reconfigure our private and public institutions of higher learning to transform and democratise them from the twin tyranny of State and the markets.
As officials at Commission for University Education sleep on their jobs, the market university shall wreak havoc on the most cherished sector.
Meanwhile, the State has demonstrated unwillingness, ignorance and indifference as far as purpose and reforms of higher education is concerned. When market logic enters and academic arena, it requires a strong State to intervene and correct market distortions and rent seeking.
For example, it is common knowledge that part time cannot nourish and develop the next generation of scholars due to rampant exploitation and uncertainty. Secondly, that the state has allowed the unfettered free hand of the market to determine rules of the game presupposes official tolerance of corruption.
Other than condemning the Presbyterian university for behaving madly, other universities in Kenya need to be held to account with the State playing its traditional role.
The much talked about Vision 2030 shall remain a dream which only a few can dream about if the State engages in policies and practices that undermines higher education.
While former President Kibaki elevated many middle-level colleges to fully-fledged universities for political expediency, a comprehensive audit to establish and even downgrade some universities need to be conducted to get rid of mediocrity and incompetence in academia, management and other ills that have come to define higher education in Kenya.
The writer is a lecturer at USIU.
