Woes facing Kenya’s higher education go beyond Uasu

It is about 50 days since the strike called by University Academic Staff Union (Uasu) began. This is the fourth in less than 12 months. The crisis facing higher education has the most tenuous relationship with Uasu. Neither has it anything to do with students, parents or commercialisation of higher education, nay! The crisis of higher education in Kenya has everything to do with leadership at the level of government. It does not take a genius to realise that higher education is not taken seriously. As I have argued before, Uasu’s voice needs to be heard beyond the narrow (off) tunes of that song Solidarity Forever. From political discourse, to actual funding, higher education is at best tolerated, and considered a distraction from basic and secondary education.

2022 SUCCESSION

As the recent disastrous allocations of Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Services (KUCPS) show, there is clearly something wrong with the running of higher education in Kenya. Some universities were allocated as few as two students yet have full (fattened) councils paid for by an already burdened tax payer. We have more universities than we have need and can barely afford to sustain the 64 universities strewn across the country.  Many of these problems are clearly beyond Uasu! Meanwhile, as the current strike took its toll, it took nearly 30 days before Education CS Amina Mohammed uttered a word. And when she did, her response that she was waiting for a headcount from universities was unconvincing and uninspiring. In the meantime, those who should be concerned are consumed in premature presidential campaigns for the deputy President.

NOXIOUS LEVELS

The 2022 succession seems to be the most urgent matter for this country. I do agree with arguments that politicisation of higher education has reached noxious levels. Virtually all major universities are tribalised at the apex with autochthony being the chief requirement for academic leadership.  I am sure Kenyans now know that any position above a deputy vice-chancellor is as political as that of a colonial chief. Uasu has little to do with most of these shenanigans. Even in the past when Uasu leaned more towards social justice, appointments were still political, although less ethnicised than they are today.

SCORN

While academics should not expect to be paid high salaries in a country that has little regard for intellectuals, they still have a right to a decent pay. We have deliberately turned our lecturers into paupers and for this we commit a grievous ‘sin’. As key drivers of the economy, and the creators of skilled human resource that has always put Kenya way above her peers, lecturers deserve a decent pay. In the current stalemate, the state has simply treated lecturers with scorn. The CBA last year was only signed because of the looming presidential election. In actual fact, it was only a series of strikes that compelled implementation of that CBA. Interestingly, while criticism was leveled against Uasu for waiting too late in the day, a similar criticism is being given to Uasu for clamouring a little too early for the current CBA. These criticisms only lend legitimacy to the argument that the State seems only to prefer and understand the bear-knuckled language of labour withdrawal.

BONANZA

Still, Uasu needs some introspection, not so much on its methods, but on its vision of wealth creation for its members. While I agree with the authors that the yesteryear Uasu was better focused, it is also true that it operated on a clearly different, social, political and economic context. The massification of education was a bonanza of sorts to Uasu, and possibly the reason why it is still singularly salivating on cash payments. That bonanza is long gone and Uasu has already smelled the coffee. I do not think that Uasu, on its own, has the wherewithal of singularly transforming higher education without proper leadership at the political level.

INFLATION

However, Uasu can still realise welfare for its members by focusing beyond CBAs and puny increases which are slow in coming, and when they do, are swallowed up in inflation. A more fruitful focus will be to agitate for meaningful, long term welfare issues such as house ownership, robust health insurance covers and possibly tax exemption from such things as car imports, and the complete exemption from paying university tuition fees for their own children in those universities which they teach. The clamour for more and more CBAs will never haul esteemed dons from their despondency. Still, it is wrong to blame Uasu for woes that primarily are the province of universities management organs. Uasu’s voice in the critical arms of university governance has all been dashed by statutes that exclude them from such deliberative fora.

MASSIFICATION

Many of the troubles related to the crises facing higher education like leadership, massification of university education, careerism and the denigration of professorship are essentially the dirty underclothes of university councils and rogue VCs. For higher education to be restored, the discussion must go beyond Uasu, who are just but a tiny cog in a complex system with many actors, some of whom care very little for the overall welfare of higher education.

We need honest discussions on quality, funding and the spread of higher learning. More important, university education must be de-politicised and de-tribalised. Besides, a more democratic form of governance is urgently needed, and the days when a university VC is appointed as a result of drooling and kowtowing to political brokers, some of whom have never stepped in a university lecture room, must certainly stop!

The writer lectures at Moi University; [email protected]