How Kenya shot itself in the foot with PhDs target

President Uhuru Kenyatta confers a doctoral degree to Daniel Ananda Otanga during the inaugural graduation ceremony at Kibabii University in 2016. [File, Standard]

The Commission for University Education (CUE)’s decision to defer a requirement for all lecturers to have a PhD was an act of surrender to wishful thinking that Kenya had the capacity of achieving such a feat within five years.

The higher education regulator had in 2014 given local universities a five-year period to implement a rule in which all lecturers were to have doctorates by end of 2018. But as the deadline approached, then CUE chairman Chacha Nyaigotti called for a time out -- most lecturers had not even registered for the PhDs or found supervisors. Some had stagnated at dissertation proposal stages.