Shocking reality of Kenyan universities on the brink of collapse

Public university lecturers demonstrate along streets of Nairobi on February14, 2017. [Photo/John Muchucha/Standard]

During the 40th Hoernel Memorial lecture at Braamfontein, South African public intellectual Jonathan Jensen delivered a brutally honest lecture that rattled his country’s higher education.

Titled ‘When does a university cease to exist?,’ the lecture was an appraisal of historically black universities in post-Apartheid South Africa, but has since become an enduring reference to the condition of universities across Africa. Describing a South African university campus he’d recently visited, Jensen’s could just have been a graphic portrayal of a local campus.