Universities to pay Sh300,000 for degree studies

Universities will now pay Sh300,000 if they wish to start teaching a new academic programme.

This is after a proposal to cut off professional bodies in the approval of academic programmes was launched in the institutions.

According to the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms, professional bodies in the country will be blocked from accrediting degree programmes in universities if its proposals are adopted.

Under the proposed reforms, the laws granting professional bodies power to accredit university courses along their profession will be revoked and that mandate be solely given to the Commission for University Education (CUE).

The CUE in 2016 set rates payable by both public and private institutions towards audit and quality assurance. The auditing of the academic programme was set at the cost of Sh320,000 and the campus accreditation audit of Sh150,000 according to the new rates.

With the elimination of professional bodies, the institutions will now be required to pay one body for accreditation of academic programmes. The commission also digitised the exercise in 2021 to ease the accreditation process. Prior to this, universities had raised concerns over CUE’s sluggish manner of conducting audits and accreditation.

Under the 2016 audit guidelines, universities are also required to pay a flat rate annual fee of Sh1,000 per student they admit. This means that universities shall pay Sh1,000 for every bachelor's, master's, postgraduate diploma and PhD that gets admitted to those institutions.

Universities seeking an audit to determine if they will be awarded a letter of interim authority or applying for an audit of a new constituent college are required to pay Sh405,000 while those seeking to be awarded a charter need to pay a Sh480,000 as application fee.

On the other hand, the institutions have to pay Sh480,000 to make an application for an award of the charter. For institution audits, universities are required to pay quality audit charges of Sh900. Universities are also required to pay for application to collaborate with another institution in issuing a degree programme and those charges vary depending on whether it is a local collaboration or it is with a foreign institution.

For local universities, the institutions will also pay some Sh405,000 towards application charges for authority to collaborate per degree programme. And collaboration between a foreign university and a local institution will cost Sh385,700.