Report shows few engineers going back to class

Only 15 engineers graduate from the 12 public universities with PhDs annually, a new audit has revealed.

The Baseline Survey of Engineering Departments by the Kenya Education Network (Kenet) was released by Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i yesterday.

The survey shows only 122 people graduated with master's degrees in the 2013-2014 academic year. Some 1,533 undergraduates enrolled in the same year.

"This means that we are not converting these undergraduates into PhDs fast enough," said Kenet lead researcher Moeli Kashorda.

The report revealed Egerton University, University of Nairobi and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) produced the 15 PhD graduates in the 2013-2014 academic year.

Five of these were in agricultural engineering and were done at Egerton University, while JKUAT produced three PhD holders in mechanical engineering. The remaining seven were from UoN (in environmental and bio-systems engineering).

The report notes all the 15 PhDs were all from one category of engineering programmes – mechanical and mechatronics engineering (MME), with none from civil and structuring engineering (CSE) and electrical and electronics engineering.

Overall, the report says there are only 193 registered faculty members with a PhD in public universities.

The report reveals in the 2012-2013 academic year, only nine people graduated with PhDs and 35 with master's degrees while undergraduate enrolment stood at 1,100.