We must halt this deterioration that has hit university education right now
What you need to know:
- The report only substantiates the obvious, for it has been clear for some time now that the rapid expansion of university education is geared towards quantity rather than quality.
- Both public and private universities are growing at a frenetic pace, competing to enrol the largest numbers of students, but with little regard to basic entry requirements or commensurate expansion in teaching staff, facilities, and equipment.
- Maybe he has been distracted by the battles with the perpetually striking teachers, but Education Minister Jacob Kaimenyi has taken his eye off the ball as university education goes awry.
The expansion of university education must be called to a halt until proper structures are put in place to ensure that quality is not compromised by the lure of lucre.
This is the only conclusion one can draw from The World Bank study exposing the poor quality of graduates being churned out by Kenyan universities.
The report only substantiates the obvious, for it has been clear for some time now that the rapid expansion of university education is geared towards quantity rather than quality.
Both public and private universities are growing at a frenetic pace, competing to enrol the largest numbers of students, but with little regard to basic entry requirements or commensurate expansion in teaching staff, facilities, and equipment.
Today, anyone in Kenya with the money can join a university, even having come out of high school with an ‘F’, and graduate in a few years boasting a degree, but still as illiterate as they were at the time of their enrolment.
The so-called Parallel Programme was a noble idea geared towards expanding opportunities for those who missed out on the limited spaces available in public universities or wanted to get ahead of the slow queues.
However, it has been bastardised to become a cash-minting machine. Quality has been thrown out of the window in the mad dash for cash.
Maybe he has been distracted by the battles with the perpetually striking teachers, but Education Minister Jacob Kaimenyi has taken his eye off the ball as university education goes awry.
Also in gross dereliction of duty has been the chairman of the Commission for University Education, Prof Henry Moses Thairu.
The two good professors may have inherited problems created by their predecessors many times removed, but that does not absolve them from the responsibility of fixing the mess.
Prof Kaimenyi assumed the Education docket in April 2013 after the installation of the Jubilee coalition administration, and that should have afforded him enough time to stem the growing rot.
Prof Thairu got the top Commission for University Education job in January 2014 and at this stage, 22 months later, cannot claim that he is still trying to figure out where the bathrooms are.
Apart from all manner of studies and a few tentative steps aimed at taming rogue institutions, we have seen little to suggest that the authorities are aware of the problem in university education and the need for drastic measures to rectify this.
The Ministry of Education is supposed to provide overall leadership and oversight on all matters education in Kenya. This includes ensuring quality all the way from kindergarten to university.
The Commission for University Education is more specifically charged with accreditation and must inspect all institutions to ensure that they meet requisite standards in physical facilities, lecturers, libraries, laboratories and other facilities and equipment, academic programmes, and governance structures.
If it had been doing its job, universities would not be churning out half-baked graduates, as has now become the norm. Our urban and rural townships would not be overflowing with campuses that are sorry excuses for institutions of higher education.
There are just too many campuses sandwiched between noisy bars and brothels and hardly offering conducive environments for learning and scholarship. Most of them lack the bare minimum staff and facilities.
They are being established even without lecturers, the result being that most of our universities rely, to a large extent, on temporary staff who rush from one college to another just for the stipend but barely have enough time or inclination to offer the requisite supervision to their students.
Our university lecturers spend their time running from one overcrowded classroom to another and never have time for study, research, and publication.
This situation is clearly untenable and must be contained before it gets worse. The immediate solution would be an immediate moratorium on the establishment of new universities and constituent colleges until all the existing facilities are subjected to a rigorous inspection programme and forced to meet the basic standards.
No country in the world looking forward to taking the leap to development and progress can afford to throw its education system to the dogs.
[email protected]. Twitter: @MachariaGaitho
