How craze for audit cultures have strangled our varsities

Taita-Taveta University Vice Chancellor Professor Hamadi Boga (in light blue gown) receives an ISO certificate from the Kenya Bureau of Standards during the institution’s first graduation ceremony in 2017. [File, Standard]

It is official, Kenyan universities now live in a pervasive audit culture.

The economic imperatives of neo-liberalism and the technologies of ‘new’ managerialism are making a profound change in how universities are managed, and by extension refashioning how academics view themselves.