State responsible for mess in universities

Kenyatta University Staff Union lecturers demonstrate on Nairobi’s streets in 2017 over an unpaid Sh10 billion Collective Bargain Agreement. [File, Standard]

The Government through the State Department of Higher Education has kicked off the process of rationalising public universities in a bid to reduce the public wage bill and improve the quality of the curriculum offered.

“Our universities have taken a path that must be redirected,” said Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha. “Every university is teaching everything and it doesn’t make sense.”

This implies that some universities will, in the long run, be reorganised and some constituent colleges shut down as faculty and administrative resources are redirected. University staff have come out to protest the move fearing it could lead to significant job losses and blamed the Government for creating the mess currently faced by public universities.

“It is true that standards may have fallen in some of these institutions, but the reason is that the Government has abandoned them and instead is funding private universities,” said the Kenya University Staff Union Secretary-General Dr Charles Mukwaya.

Kenya’s university student population is said to grow at more than 20 per cent year-on-year, fuelled by the introduction of parallel degree programmes in 1998.

In a bid to boost capacity and enrolment in the higher education sector, former president Mwai Kibaki in 2013 handed out charters to 15 constituent colleges, elevating them to full-fledged university status.

This was a populist move and came against objections from both within and outside government. Concerns were raised over inadequate personnel and curriculum development as well as lack of resources.

Currently, the number of public and private universities in the country stands at 70, 23 of them being public chartered universities while another 17 have been given charters to operate as private universities.

Another 10 and five institutions have been registered to act as constituent colleges to public and private universities respectively. As experts had warned, the capacity challenges raised five years ago have materialised, with the Auditor General recently saying close to a dozen major public universities are facing a cash crunch.

These include the Universities of Nairobi and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, which last month hit the headlines for awarding 118 PhD degrees in a single graduation ceremony. 

While it is true universities need to be reformed, the Government should not fail to mention its role in catalysing the current predicament.