What now for students caught in degree crisis?

Early this year, Engineers Registration Board (ERB) gave students from Egerton, Kenyatta, and Masinde Muliro universities a surprise when they said they wouldn’t recognise their engineering degrees.

By so doing, ERB warned that such university degrees would not be recognised anywhere else in the world either. The revelation plunged the future of the aspiring engineering students into uncertainty.

The graduates from Egerton then embarked on petitioning the government through the Ministry of Higher Education, to have their degrees recognised. The outcome of the petition is yet to be known.

A similar fate has befallen law students from some public and private universities, creating anxiety.

For instance, the Commission for Higher Education (CHE), the government agency mandated to accredit universities, gave Kabarak University the green light to offer degree programmes in law, but the Council of Legal Education (CLE) said the students would not be given admission to the Kenya School of Law because it had not endorsed the university.

The decision shutters the dreams of hundreds of the would-be lawyers.

By regulation, law graduates have to study a diploma at the Kenya School of Law to be allowed to practice in the country.

Other professional boards, such as the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB), Medical Practitioners and Dentistry Board (MPDB), Nursing Council, and the Veterinary Board are also asserting their regulatory authority in training, causing turmoil in the higher education sector.

There is also the Kenya Medical Laboratory and Technicians Board (KMLTB) and the Clinical Officers Association.

Contacted for a response, the vice chancellor of Kenyatta University, Prof Olive Mugenda, who also chairs the bord of public universities vice chancellors, said: “Professional bodies are good because they enhance quality by screening and registering professionals to maintain competence and uphold the highest standards possible.”

However, Prof Mugenda faulted the professional boards for lacking capacity to ensure the international best practices they demand.

“The boards must be ahead of training institutions that they oversee in order to demand quality from them,” she said.

According to CLE director, Prof Wanyama Kulundu-Bitonye, professional boards are very critical for quality assurance.

In an interview, Prof Kulundu said that although the line between CHE and professional bodies’ regulation framework was very thin, degree programmes had to be endorsed by the latter.

“Our role is additional to what the commission does. Institutions must seek our accreditation,” he asserted, and then added: “When inspecting for quality and standards, we look at the same things that the commission does, such as libraries, lecturers, facilities, course programmes, among others.”

Part of the problem could be in the levies that professional boards charge to inspect universities and other colleges. They are high, resulting in the argument by universities that they have the ripple effect of increasing the cost of higher education in the country.

For example, CLE, PPB, and KMLTB ask for Sh800,000, Sh300,000, and Sh484,000 respectively, to evaluate a degree programme. In comparison, CHE charges a standard fee of Sh150,000 for the same.

The training institutions note that the high levies by the professional regulatory authorities defeat the purpose of making higher education affordable to all Kenyans.

This is particularly when the issue of double-regulation is highlighted, because the universities and diploma training colleges have to contend with the expenses associated with the evaluation by several other professional bodies besides CHE.

The implication of this development is competition and duplication of efforts, especially where the regulatory boards are drawn from the same sector, such as in health. In this sector, there is, for example, the PPB, Nursing Council, KMLTB, MPDB, and Clinical Officers Association.

Prof Kulundu suggests that the country could emulate South Africa, where all professional bodies and associations are housed by the accrediting agency of the government.

This way, the evaluation of programmes is reduced to only one body, but assisted by representatives of the professional associations to make sure that the training being offered is up to scratch.

“This is because the practice of recognition by CHE should take into account subject specialisation, where the professional bodies come into play,” he says.

PPB, among others, has also come under attack for charging individual students pursuing university courses Sh1,000 for indexing, a move that is seen to be competing with the training institutions for the revenues generated by the students.

Although PPB registrar, Dr Kipkerich Kosgey, could not be reached for comment, other associations noted that dealing with the institutions rather than the students was the ideal situation.

The board also came under sharp focus when students from Nairobi and Kabete Technical Training Institutes sued it for failing to recognise their diplomas as awarded by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC).

The High Court ruled that the board did not have the power not to acknowledge certificates awarded by a government approved agency such as the KNEC.