Why reforming universities is no walk in the park

The question of withdrawal of degrees earlier awarded, for example, could be tricky. Universities have senates which operate according to statutes. These statutes are different in each university. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • When you withdraw certificates for Kenyan students who did not score a C+ on admission, what do you do about a student from Uganda or Sudan, who was in class with the Kenyan student and who has gone back home and is working with a certificate that needs to be withdrawn?
  • The question of missing marks is not as easy as the public has been made to believe. We are living in a difficult era where a student could walk out of an examination room with a script.
  • Some students found coping can even shove you aside as they run out with a script you want to retrieve. Students miss CATs while some take CATs with different lecturers at different times.

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i intends to address a host of problems in the Kenyan universities.

They range from cheating in examinations, universities offering unapproved programmes, universities graduating students without proper marks, universities offering online programmes without approval and universities having to grapple with missing marks.

There are also students being registered for university programmes without the requisite grades, something that could lead to certificate cancellation.

Nevertheless, changes envisaged will have quite a number of challenges which we need to reflect on a lot more seriously because we are dealing with generations of students who have rendered and are still rendering services elsewhere in the country.

By no means am I suggesting universities should be left unchecked and unchanged, far from it.

The question of withdrawal of degrees earlier awarded, for example, could be tricky. Universities have senates which operate according to statutes. These statutes are different in each university. A senate normally sets admission criteria and could have other options which could allow a student who did not score a C+ to join a university perhaps because he has gone through some other training and improved on his ability.

When you withdraw certificates for Kenyan students who did not score a C+ on admission, what do you do about a student from Uganda or Sudan, who was in class with the Kenyan student and who has gone back home and is working with a certificate that needs to be withdrawn?

Further, as you withdraw certificates from Kenyan universities what then happens to certificates from, say, some Indian, Canadian and American universities, that may not be internationally recognised and yet people have their certificates to gain employment here and even in the very universities we are reforming? Some of the students from universities abroad may have joined those universities with marks far below the marks required in Kenya.

MISSING MARKS

I strongly agree universities need reforms but we have to think critically. The students whose certificates will be withdrawn could move to court to sue universities or even government for giving them wrong guidance on admission.

I believe the commission for University Education understands that universities have different rules and regulations which are enforced by qualified academics and as an oversight body, they are only helping those universities to implement their regulations. I do not think for a moment that we would like to replace the university senates with any other body in running daily businesses.

Regarding the offering of quality programmes one needs to note that this is dependent on good funding. Yet as it is now most universities, both public and private, are struggling with low funding which means they are unable to buy books, equip laboratories, have good workshops, finance field trips and pay their lecturers well who would ensure there is quality learning, teaching and research.

Cheating is a challenging feat yet it is compounded by the numbers of students lecturers handle these days. Further we need to find out whether we actually need that good education in the first place. Present employers do not even ask for it.

The question of missing marks is not as easy as the public has been made to believe. We are living in a difficult era where a student could walk out of an examination room with a script. Some students found coping can even shove you aside as they run out with a script you want to retrieve. Students miss CATs while some take CATs with different lecturers at different times.

 It is true some lecturers delay in their marking but I hope even with deadlines, nobody expects a lecturer who is a researcher, a writer, with no support system to mark 1,000 scripts in two weeks. Yet one has to remember most universities have no adequate offices for lecturers making administering of exams, supervision, of theses, teaching and full time research very difficult.

What I think can happen is to drastically reduce the number of students joining universities. This will mean lecturers have numbers they can cope with all the way from schools of medicine to law schools and to languages classes where I teach.

Then universities need to have money for research, books, offices for lecturers and of course receive students that have genuinely passed their examinations then we can apply the rules of reform moving forward.