We need more farm managers than professors

The joke doing rounds on discussion forums by university teachers is that a number of them wish to change careers.

Many lecturers are looking at the possibility of being re-hired as university farm managers, librarians, motor vehicle fleet managers, caterers, registrars, among other university administrative posts that they had previously considered beneath them.

Why? Because someone sat somewhere and concluded that since the support staff actually use their hands to do their jobs while the professors sit around pretending to be thinking, watu wa mkono should be paid more than the dreamers of big ideas! It is, indeed, fair. But that is also where the fairness ends.

For sure, managing thousands of volumes of outdated, moth-infested, dog-eared books is a more demanding task. Books are dear in this country which taxes them heavily.

ECONOMIST

When finishing high school, I wished to be an agricultural economist. I had mortal fear of hunger. Life hadn’t been easy in my childhood.

I didn’t make it to college, though, to study the economics of agriculture. But I would be the last person to think less of the indefatigable managers of university farms.

Our universities should be teaching agriculture as a common course.

Why they don’t — instead teaching IT, communication skills and HIV/Aids, compulsorily to all students — is difficult to understand.

And who doubts that those who cook deserve respect?

Who would think low of those who manage restaurants?

EATING BUSINESS

We all must eat to continue living. It is important, therefore, that those who are in charge of kitchens, dining halls and the whole cooking and eating business be properly compensated.

It isn’t easy to decide on menus for young people.

It is not child’s play to ensure that the whole food preparation and distribution economy is running smooth to avoid food poisoning, outbreak of cholera, wastage, infestation by rats, among other things that bother caterers. Such workers must be paid accordingly.

Then we all know, after some horrible accident, that we need to keep our vehicles in good mechanical condition.

TRANSCRIPTS

If you are managing a big pool of buses in a university where students are always going out on a trip or another, it is only fair that you be paid properly to avoid chances of inflating fuel or maintenance invoices.

And without registrars – they originally just maintained registers, just for clarity’s sake – universities won’t run smoothly.

We won’t know how many students are registered in our universities or what semester is coming after the current one.

There will be a problem with generation of transcripts and certificates.

New courses won’t be introduced. Management meetings won’t be convened. Minutes at senates will be difficult to generate, among other problems that the university might run into.

CONSPIRACY

Don’t worry that in these days of integrated student management systems that ICT delivered a few years ago, records for thousands of students can be generated, managed and maintained by a single computer and one worker.

Do not even be bothered that record (mis)management in our universities is a long tale. 

There are enough studies, conducted at universities by professors, which show that the division of labour in society is a conspiracy against people who actually work with their hands.

But guess what? Kenyan professors actually use their hands a lot to read, research, teach and supervise students.

CROWDED CLASSES

Teaching in our universities is more hand work than brain work. Chalkboards and chalk, whiteboards and marker pens, etc, are still the preferred work tools.

Many Kenyan professors teach hundreds of students in crowded classes.

So, when these teachers are told that they will soon earn less than their “support staff”, what are they supposed to do, really?

Are they expected to still go to class and teach because teaching is a calling? Or should they teach simply because they are patriotic? This isn’t really about remuneration, or is it?

The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]