Overhaul the hiring of VCs to reform public universities

Members of staff of Moi University’s main campus protested appointment of Prof Laban Ayiro as acting vice chancellor following the exit of Prof Richard Mibeyin September, [Photo: File, Standard)

The process of appointing vice chancellors and their deputies in Kenya is awfully dysfunctional. Often, considerations for the job are a mix of merit, political connections and blatant tribal calculus. As such, the period preceding the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor turns the university into a space of fierce power struggles.

For long, tribal logic has defined who becomes VC or deputy VC in any university campus. At a time when the State is paying lip service to integration and inclusiveness, we still regard it as a norm for a Luo to head a university in Nyanza, a Luhya in Western, a Kalenjin in Rift Valley and a Kikuyu in Central and so on.

This is backward - 18th century thinking. Recently, when attempts were made to disrupt this pattern following the appointments of perceived ‘outsiders’ in universities in the North Rift, chaos broke out. This is unsurprising. We have accepted a dysfunctional politicised process in appointing university bosses which places premium on political and tribal capital than on other merits.

State-led process

The current state-led process of appointing a VC or his deputy in Kenya is ritualistic and mindless. This politicised process reproduces toady and weakened persons in university leadership who routinely turn to Nairobi before making important decisions. This is probably why our universities are wallowing in a financial, academic and structural hemorrhage.

A proper reform of universities must begin with an overhaul of the process through which university VCs and their deputies are appointed. The VC is the principal academic and administrative officer as well as the most important functionary in a university. Ordinarily, he or she is a distinguished scholar with a high standing in his/her field coupled with a comprehensive administrative experience.

While the increased corporatisation of universities in the West have forced universities to make compromises on the academic profile of a potential VC where administrative merit is privileged over academic considerations, serious research universities still require high levels of both. Besides academic worth and administrative competence, a good VC must have an impeccable moral stature.

The rationale is that universities need distinguished and dignified persons as VCs so that they are treated with dignity and regard, which this office, as a symbol of the university, merits. The same attributes are required of deputy vice chancellors because some later become VCs.

Although the Jubilee Government has attempted a number of controversial reforms in higher education such as reconstituting councils and rousing the Commission of University Education (CUE) from years of slumber, it has maintained a strong hold in the appointment of VCs and their deputies.

Accordingly, universities are now retrogressing to Kanu-era machinations in a context where the State is increasingly intrusive in university affairs, and where university bosses are extensions of the State, rather than the university.

Broadly, there are two main processes of appointing VCs and their deputies; a State-controlled system and an autonomous system where State influence is minimal, if present. Since independence Kenya has preferred the former, with founding President Jomo Kenyatta setting a controversial precedence when he bypassed more qualified scholars to handpick his kin from Kiambu, Josphat Karanja, as Kenya’s first VC.

This decision set the stage for the political tribalisation of the academe in Kenya. Although the appointment of VCs has mutated over the years with varying degrees of state influence, it is still very much a political than a professional process.

The president is no longer the chancellor of universities, but he or she appoints ceremonial persons to act as chancellors. Presently, the Executive appoints university councils who in turn preside over the process of appointing the VC and his deputies. In Kenya, as was seen when the councils were reconstituted a couple of months ago, appointment to council is a troubling mix of patronage, social connections and a tool of appeasing political constituencies.

The practice in Kenya involves council declaring the positions of VCs and their deputies vacant, after which shortlisted candidates are interviewed and three names for each position (often in hierarchical order of preference) are forwarded to the Cabinet Secretary. The CS proceeds to appoint whoever he or she prefers among the three. But this is never a straightforward process. Since the CS is an appointee of the president, political expedience overrides other considerations.

Forward looking

In Kenya, successful candidates for appointment to the office of VC and deputy VC is a product of the negotiation between vested local and national political interests, tribal arithmetic and strategic lobbying. Academic and other personal merits rank much lower in the scale. It is mostly political expedience.

This deeply flawed process has unintended consequences. Not only is the autonomy of the university to pick the best candidate undermined, but the commitment of the academe to pursue scientific truth and academic freedom is jeopardised.

Notably, since persons occupying the positions of VCs and deputy VCs are often products of compromises in a wider power game involving strategic political interests, such appointees privilege these external interests, especially when they conflict with more urgent internal needs. For instance, the greed for tenders in the Jubilee administration is pushing university bosses to pursue priorities set by profiteers and tenderpreneuring politicians than by actual needs.

Forward looking democracies where academic freedom is valued prefer to use autonomous processes where the appointment of VCs is completely protected from politics. VCs appointed in autonomous, consultative processes naturally pursue the interests of the university with surgical singularity.

To start off, we must we must depoliticise the way our university councils are constituted and populate them with a competent mix of industry and academic experts. Thereafter, once a vacancy is declared in the position of VC or deputy VC, a select committee comprised of international distinguished scholars is mandated by the university council to shortlist candidates.

The candidates on the final shortlist then appear before both this committee and the university senate to make public presentations their vision for the university and the role that they envisage for themselves.

Senate, as the foremost body for regulating academic affairs in the university, then pronounces itself on the suitability for appointment of each of the candidates and recommendations on a suitable candidate are made to council. This could be through a non-binding, symbolic vote or a binding vote depending on the composition of the senate.

Finally, the council after taking into consideration the views of the select committee and the vote of the senate makes the final appointment. This process combines both the ideals of meritocracy and democracy and is the most preferred in countries such as Germany, The United Kingdom, South Africa and the US. This partly explains why universities from these countries have continuously topped rankings.

There is a significant relationship between the quality and status of an institution and its leadership. More important, the quality of the top leadership we now have in our universities is also a byproduct of the process of appointing them. To properly reform higher education in Kenya, we must democratise and adopt a more merit-based system of appointing VCs and their deputies.

Dr Omanga lectures at Moi University