How Module II brought scholarship in Kenyan universities to its knees

It is expected that in less than a month, a committee appointed by Education CS Amina Mohamed will recommend the dissolution of Module II programmes in local public universities.

The inter-ministerial task force she appointed two weeks ago has been looking “into education systems” and “delivery of services in the institutions of higher learning.”

The task force has been working quietly, visibly sceptical of views from university administrators and lecturers alike. With unemployment rates for university graduates reaching endemic levels, the government is keen to revert university education to the earlier elitist model to allow the majority of the youth to be trained as artisans and technicians deemed to be crucial in the fulfilment of both “Agenda Four” and Vision 2030 ambitions.

Module II or parallel programmes were introduced in the late 1990s as an innovative way for universities to supplement their operational capital. They were pioneered at the University of Nairobi during the tenure of Prof Francis Gichaga.

ACADEMIC ADVANCEMENT

The programmes came with many benefits for many people. First, they provided opportunities for academic advancement to a huge backlog of Kenyans that had qualified for university education but couldn’t join as university admission used to be tied to bed capacity. It also stemmed the annual trooping of Kenyan students to expensive foreign universities while providing employment to many part-time lecturers. 

But Module II also helped highly commercialise higher education, driving the final nail on the coffin of serious scholarship. With the degrees being sought solely for job promotion, the system was also abused as students pursued degrees at any cost, using all means necessary.

There were tales of individual assignments done in different handwriting, of powerful people being coached by lecturers in the comfort of their offices, of purchasable degree certificates, sexually transmitted grades, and of carousing lecturers who lost examination scripts in bars. All this undermined scholarship.

But the beginning of the end was hardly televised. To cater for the large number of students, and in order for universities — and lecturers — to make more money, teaching went on throughout the year.

MAXIMUM PAY

The traditional academic year comprising two semesters, allowing a third semester for research and writing, was replaced by non-stop, day and night teaching for maximum pay.

Some lecturers would teach in Nairobi in the morning and in Mombasa, Kisumu or Eldoret a few hours later. Those who didn’t fly drove across the country, tired and sleepy, at great risk to themselves, to teach in far-flung campuses.

It was as if Chepkube, the legendary outpost that was the panya route for the highly lucrative coffee smuggling in the late 1970s, had happened all over again. Upsetting the status-income disequilibrium for the first time since the 1970s, lecturers built cathedral houses, bought SUVs and some married additional wives. Female professors simply ballooned. Times were good.

But hedonistic temerity has a way of blinding everyone. It was just a matter of time before the bubble would burst. No one saw this. In fact, the bubble didn’t burst in one explosive event. Instead, it has been experiencing a slow-punctured deflation.

CORRUPTION

First, corruption set in. Too much money tends to attract the worst of the scoundrels and this case was no different. With most lecturers busy teaching and content to make a little money, sleazy, ambitious, professorial big-money psychopaths with the ethics of foxes quickly procured promotions in order to qualify for appointment to top administrative positions.

The opening of the sluice gates of Module II money coincided with the advent of a revolution in publishing — the rise of open-access and predatory journals. Lecturers stampeding to become administrators quickly published anywhere and everywhere, often using the work of their students.

It so happens that administrative leadership trumps academic leadership in Kenya, hence the ruinous competition. The Kenyan university is also the last outpost of authoritarianism after the democratisation of every other institution. A junior academic still wearing tutorial fellow diapers can lord it over a full professor and no one sees anything wrong with that. Not that it matters anyway, because it also depends on how the professor became a professor.

TENDERS FLOATED

Holders of such administrative positions were also the wielders of the big knifes in the Module II dispensation, the ones strategically positioned to chop off fatty, palpitant chunks of the beast for themselves. Construction tenders were floated and awarded — and kickbacks did their thing. So much so that the leaders forgot to pay the people who were raising the funds, the lecturers, some of who are now owed more than three years’ worth of pay.

You will know such lecturers by their deformed shoes, faded jackets and the visible ego-deflation that comes from too much dependency on the generosity of spouses. As frustrated lecturers realised what was going on, they sought to have their salaries increased as a bulwark against the irregular and often missing Module II payments. 

That is how greed and poor leadership in universities contributes to the strikes experienced in public universities and the regrettable state of scholarship in the country. 

 Dr Ngugi teaches at the School of Journalism, UoN. [email protected]