Where are our philanthropists in education?

University education in Kenya is under siege mostly due to constraints in financial resources and stewardship.

As government funding for higher education dwindles, universities are depending more and more on tuition fees paid by students, which is not enough to finance all university activities.

According to reports, most of our public universities are burdened with ever-increasing debt and, if they were commercial entities, they would have had to file for bankruptcy a long time ago.

They are currently surviving mostly on goodwill and the promise of a government bailout.

This is a huge and growing problem which, if left unattended, will lead to the collapse of our higher education sector with the attendant impact on research and innovation in our country.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

Government support is critical in maintaining higher education in any country because many academic and research programmes at that level might not have immediate or obvious benefits that would interest industry and attract funding.

However, the global trend is that governments are unable to indefinitely support the growing demand for higher education, and they are encouraging universities to explore alternatives to supplement government funding in order to ensure that all citizens have access to higher education.

In Kenya, our universities have interpreted this to mean that they raise student numbers and increase tuition fees in order to support university activities.

The rise of the “parallel” programme is a case in point. At some point in the past, our universities exhibited Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” with crazy expansion into the most unlikely of places.

REGULATORY CHANGES

Campuses were set up on top of bars in cities, in the wilderness where it was difficult to imagine how teaching staff and students would access them, in hotels, and even in other learning institutions.

Regulatory changes and the small number of students meeting the minimum university entry criteria last year now threatens that model, and many universities have been forced to close campuses and rationalise student numbers.

Unfortunately, though, government funding continues to shrink, making it increasingly difficult for some universities to survive.

Universities elsewhere have faced this problem and addressed it in a different way, and perhaps our society needs to learn from them.

ENDOWED CHAIRS

Philanthropists and private organisations have, over the years, “adopted” whole schools or departments in universities, providing endowments that ensure the institutions can concentrate on their core mandate.

Such departments and schools often adopt the names of their benefactors, as well as creating endowed chairs or professorships.

Thus a philanthropist with interest in mental health research might provide an endowment to support a Mental Health Professorship in a university engaged in mental health research, enabling the professor to conduct research and mentor young researchers and mental health professionals.

Another one interested in the teaching of mental health might provide funds to support the position of the chair of the department.

Alternatively they may provide an endowment to run the core functions of the department in perpetuity, resulting in the renaming of the department in honour of the benefactor.

ADEQUATELY FUNDED

The beauty with endowments is that they free the university’s resources to deal with other important activities that might not have been adequately funded.

The result is that academics and researchers are able to focus on the work they enjoy doing, resulting in increased productivity and potential innovations.

The university can therefore attract top brains to conduct cutting edge research and train the next generation of experts in their field.

Why don’t we see such arrangements in Kenya? Is it because we do not have enough philanthropists or organisations interested in supporting research and academics?
I do not think so.

Lukoye Atwoli is Associate Professor and Dean, Moi University School of Medicine [email protected]