CUE new proposal major blow to non chartered varsities

Education CS Amina Mohamed receives the Commission for University Education status report on reforms in public universities from Principal Secretary for University Education and Research, Prof Japheth Micheni Ntiba, at Jogoo House, Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • CUE says only chartered universities should be allocated government sponsored students as per the legal provisions.

  • There are 73 universities in Kenya categorised as follows: 31 public chartered universities; 6 constituent colleges; 18 private chartered universities; 5 private constituent colleges and 13 institutions with letters of interim authority.

  • The institutions are also required to establish an efficient and effective student management system to ensure that student progress is in accordance with senate approval.

More than 13 private universities with letters of interim authority have suffered a major blow after the Commission for University Education (CUE) recommended that they should not be given government sponsored students.

In their proposal to Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, CUE says only chartered universities should be allocated government sponsored students as per the legal provisions.

This means that some of these universities are likely to shut down since a majority of students in those institutions are sponsored by the government under a programme introduced two years ago.

Also some of the institutions attracted less than 100 students in last month’s placement that was conducted by Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service.

There are 73 universities in Kenya categorised as follows: 31 public chartered universities; six constituent colleges; 18 private chartered universities; five private constituent colleges and 13 institutions with letters of interim authority.

QUALITY ASSURANCE

The report of the joint working group on quality assurance has also recommended that individual universities and colleges should ensure that no student proceeds to the next year of study until all requirements for a particular year of study are fully met.

The institutions are also required to establish an efficient and effective student management system to ensure that student progress is in accordance with senate approval.

“Universities and colleges should also put mechanisms in place to ensure that members of staff responsible for hindering student progress irregularly are held accountable,” states the report.

It also wants the Cabinet Secretary to constitute an inter-ministerial committee to harmonise accreditation of academic programmes whose graduates are registerable by professional bodies.

“All PhD holders admitted through Executive Masters degrees will not be eligible to lecture in Kenyan universities. The weighting and point system for publications should be reviewed to be consistent with international standards. This should be treated as a matter of urgency since the current system discourages collaborations and teamwork in research and publications,” reads the report.

TAX INCENTIVES

The commission will also be required to develop a repository of academic staff in universities and a repository of all publications in universities in Kenya.

“To alleviate financial pressure in universities, the government should develop policy to offer tax incentives to universities to avoid a situation where a sizeable proportion of funds sourced from funding organisations is taken up by taxes. This includes custom duty, and duty on locally assembled equipment, work permits among others. The ministry should gazette university charters and statutes that are still outstanding, as soon as possible,” states the report.

It recommends that the Kenya National Qualifications Framework (NQF) should provide the commission with level index for secondary school, certificate and diploma qualifications for purposes of harmonisation of admission requirements.

Data from the Commission indicates that a total of 3,852 programmes comprising 109 postgraduate diplomas, 1,842 Bachelor’s degree programmes 1,282 Masters programmes and 619 PhD programmes had been approved by March this year.

ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES

The report indicates that a majority of academic programmes in universities are in social and behavioural sciences category; and that approximately half   or 50 per cent of the academic programmes are in undergraduate level.

The commission has since embarked on a study to establish market needs vis-a-vis training by universities, with a view to advising on relevant curricula to the current and future industry needs.

“This will ensure that the commission approves academic programmes that are well bench-marked, researched, and relevant to national and international development goals,” reads the report.

It will be seeking to establish how current programmes on offer in universities align with national development goals and their relevance to the needs of the market or industry.

It will also look at the issue of duplication of programmes in universities and their distribution across the country as well as establish uptake of current programmes by students and the availability of qualified teaching staff for the respective programmes and document current and future needs of university training in the country.

RELATED MANDATES

On implementation of an audit report that was released in February last year, CUE says some of the accomplishments had been slowed down by issuance of contradictory statements due to lack of consensus between government agencies with related mandates.

“ The slow pace of addressing the issues raised is also occasioned by the fact that universities’ internal quality assurance systems are not well established or resourced, and, in most cases, exist only as a formality to comply with the Universities standard and guidelines. This makes implementation of roadmaps on corrective actions non-accountable,” reads the report.

There is also concerns of contraventions on admission criteria and credit transfer call for harmonisation and consensus between various agencies with related mandates.

CUE has also proposed a stop to school based programmes which mostly benefit teachers and who study during school holidays.

It says that during its study, it emerged that the programme which was initially limited to education programmes, targeting teachers, during school holidays in the months of April, August and December had been expanded to include clusters such as Business and Economics; Humanities and Social Sciences; Engineering; Medical Sciences; Technology; Visual and Performing Arts; Applied and Human Sciences; and Economics among others.

REGULAR MODE

“In all cases, the programme implements the same curriculum implemented under the regular mode, in most cases with no evidence of senate approval. Universities (both private and public) grossly overload students under the crash programme of the school based and fail to comply with the Universities standards and Guidelines, 2014, on student workload in an academic year,” says the report.

It adds that internships, attachments, practicums, and teaching practice are too complicated to fit into the programme schedule, thus compromising acquisition of skills and competences by the students needed to meet the needs of the society.

“Academic staff are equally overloaded and for years, a number of them have not gone on leave. Although Universities indicate that programmes under the  progrmme are housed at main Universities or University Campuses, audit panels observed that the actual teaching of programmes under the SBMD is mostly in off-site locations, including primary and secondary Schools, and unaccredited Centres. Such sites cannot be audited for appropriateness and adequacy of the facilities since they are not university facilities,” reads the report.

LEGAL BASIS

It adds that in a number of Universities, there were reports of using the Open, Distance and ELearning (ODEL) for school based programmes. However, no ODEL Centres had been accredited by CUE.

“The Commission in its recommendation notes that the original school-based programmes lasted for 8 years while the current school based programmes have been telescoped to cover two and a half years thus compromising the quality of the degree awarded. The Commission further notes that the School-Based Mode of Delivery of Academic Programmes was introduced without legal basis and it has compromised the quality of University education and therefore recommends that this mode of delivery of academic programmes be abolished, forthwith,” reads the report.

It adds the Commission will ensure that the programmes are stopped and constant monitoring will be undertaken given that some institutions are reinventing the practice by giving it different names.

“For programmes already in place the Commission recommends that they revert to the original 8-year duration so as to allow adequate delivery and internalization of the material covered, with teaching period or practicum designed to 12 weeks,” reads the report.