Churches should be open minded on education

The Nairobi campus of Presbyterian University of East Africa, which has been ordered closed. The university first admitted students in 2008 after it was issued with a letter of interim authority on August 10, 2007.

What you need to know:

  • The Christian Churches were responsible for the establishment and running of institutions of formal education in this country.

  • That three universities that are earmarked for closure are those that were established by and are run by churches is for me not just a contradiction but indeed a major scandal.

A piece of news that came out last Thursday is quite worrisome for some of us who care for and believe in education. It was about the matter of the revocation of the operating license of the Presbyterian University of East Africa following an order by our minister for Education. It said that the Commission for University Education has already been instructed to start the process.

Incidentally it is also in the public sphere that two other universities – the Catholic University and the Methodist one are also under investigation.

One thing that attracted my attention is that all these three universities were founded and are run by faith based institutions. It is a striking phenomenon for me in that in it I see a serious contradiction.

The Christian Churches were responsible for the establishment and running of institutions of formal education in this country. In fact, since their main intention was to evangelise our people, the formal education model became the main means of this evangelising initiative.

MAJOR SCANDAL

That three universities that are earmarked for closure are those that were established by and are run by churches is for me not just a contradiction but indeed a major scandal.

Education is a major pillar in the mix that is ordinarily put together to organise the development of any nation. In this regard religious organisations have been and ought to be major partners and indeed stakeholders in the effort towards advancing the development of our nation.

What that means to me is if they want to run institutions of higher learning they must do a few things. To begin with they must be very clear on what their vision is and what their model is.

Then, whatever their vision or model is they must make sure that they have properly trained personnel. Thirdly, they must make a clear distinction between two operations. Running a church and running an institution of higher learning. Those two realities are quite different and can sometimes have seemingly conflicting implications.

HUMILITY

The other important element is that they must spend the time and have the humility to benchmark with other similar institutions — church based or secular — who have been involved in running such institutions for much longer. To start behaving as if people are re-inventing the wheel as they establish institutions that are meant to give society a generation of people who will move it forward is like short changing such a society. Perhaps even as faith based organisations endeavour to be participants in the world of entrepreneurship in the area of higher learning some of them may need to be a little more open minded. 

 The writer is dean of students at the University of Nairobi [email protected]