Kenyan Public Universities Can Reinvent Themselves

Starting 2005 to 2015, Kenyan public and private universities had their boom era, raking billions upon billions of cash, from self-sponsored students. It was unprecedented.

Kenyan students had spent billions abroad, in Uganda and India notably, because, for the longest time, university admission was pegged on bed capacity, which for the longest time was like 10,000. So, only the top 10,000 students would be admitted to the university under the then Joint Admissions Board (JAB). Some of us had to ‘rewind’ in high school, some up to four times to get the coveted spot. Only those admitted under JAB qualified for the government subsidy and loan from the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB).

When Kibaki came to power in late 2002, he appointed some of the finest technocrats who saw the folly of Kenyans going abroad for university education, despite having the capacity and infrastructure to accommodate more students. At the time, institutions like Kampala International University and other Ugandan universities had even opened branches in Kenya to cater to the demand. In a stroke of genius, the government came up with a plan; why not admit anyone with a C+ to university and create pathways for those with lower grades in KCSE to attain a degree as well?

The plan of course created an apartheid-like system. There were 10,000-20,000 students admitted through JAB, on a government subsidy, who could also get loans from the Higher Education Loans Board and were eligible for university accommodation. The other 50,000-80,000 with the minimum requirement of a C+ and above could still be admitted to university if they could pay their tuition and sort their accommodation. This helped those who scored C+, B-, B plain, and some weaker B+s to access university education which previously they would have been blocked out of.

And with that, within six short years, up to 2010-11, universities grew in leaps and bounds, buying skyscrapers in the CBD, graduating tens of thousands every year, and by 2015, Kenya had over 500,000 university graduates. Universities were swimming in money, lecturers were well-remunerated and made teaching at university an aspirational job.

Our economy under Kibaki grew so fast, and there was a need for an educated workforce, thus, the demand side of graduates was taken care of. In my university days, in the late 2000s, blue chips used to camp on campus to recruit graduate trainees, and most graduates walked into good jobs in banking, real estate, media, ICT, transportation, logistics, exports, higher education, and the government was also expanding, creating new bodies and parastatals to handle the new problems of an expanding economy and growing population. Post-election violence was a blight in this golden era.

But generally, despite the imperfect system that clearly discriminated against government-sponsored students, the government had solved the funding crisis in universities and all of them could now sustain themselves, birthing new universities as their branches were promoted to full-fledged universities, as President Kibaki dished charters like candy from Father Christmas. Self-sponsored students paid more, but were favoured as their learning was expedited, and should I mention, the lecturers favoured them?

For some weird reason, in 2015, universities were accused of offering substandard curricula, and rampant hawking of degrees to the highest bidder, and coupled with the baseless accusation that there was widespread cheating of KCSE exams, people started the nonsensical argument that universities were churning half-baked graduates. A stupid lie told so many times that people bought into the charade.

For sure, some universities had gone overboard, and that is bound to happen when you commercialize a public good utility like education or health care. There was cheating in high school examinations for sure. And these problems needed to be addressed. But in Fred Matiang’i, we had an overzealous YES man who decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The common-sense approach was to give universities a limited period to comply and fix the KCSE cheating problem. And within a year or two, all these would have been fixed, if those responsible for the mess were made to pay the price. I watched with a lot of sadness at the time as Kenyans bought into the charade and I knew in less than 5 years, university education in Kenya would be dead. The situation was made worse by the active denigration of university education by those in government, led by the current president, and an unusual promotion of TVETS. And this made no sense at all. To date, less than 20 percent of those who sit for KCSE can access university education. There is still 80 percent that can be admitted into TVETS. Besides, it is not like we are an industrialized country to accommodate those from TVETs, and neither is the government offering any tax incentives, or making the cost power cheaper, to encourage industrialization. If anything, at the very time they were singing praises for TVETs as the way to go, many companies were shutting down and shipping out. Some of them had existed in Kenya for more than five decades, but the tax regime and the cost of power proved too much, and the spending power went down for their products. Most factories in the Industrial Area have been shut down as the Indians opted to bring in cheap imports from China, India, and other Asian countries.

In 2016, many high school students were deliberately failed in a government-led moderation of exam results to appease the public that cheating had been contained. I have never seen so much nonsense celebrated by so many, as we cheered the ruination of our education system to justify an introduction of CBC and do away with self-sponsored students, in the guise that the government will now accommodate all the 75,000 students. Private universities had to shrink, and some shut down the many branches they had opened in different parts of the country. Public universities shrunk so badly, that any time I pass by the University of Nairobi, it feels like the students are out of session permanently. The government rarely honoured its promise to send the capitation on time, nor could it pay lecturers handsomely, and the new government has made things worse having sliced the allocation to universities, and now most have been left for death. The new funding model is a lot of kalongolongo.

This is a sad time for the institutions as people now question the essence of university education. Starting from 2014 to date, more than half the graduates remain unemployed, underemployed, or extremely underpaid. In recent years, we have had a massive brain drain, and presently, over 4 million Kenyans are abroad, and almost a million have applied for their passports in the last year alone.

Public universities now look like stranded assets, and the situation could get bad, before it gets worse, considering the UDA government is totally against higher education.

So, how can universities reinvent themselves?

For starters, they can do away with the gatekeeping mindset, where they believe that education is only for a few deserving folks.

Secondly, they need to admit that there is competition from online courses- self-taught skills (in ICT, for instance)-and other institutions that are doing a better job than the universities themselves. For the longest time, a CPA-K with a Bachelor of Commerce degree probably earned more from his CPA-K than the university degree which could cost up to Sh 600,000-800,000 in tuition fees for self-sponsored students. A CPA-K diploma costs a small fraction of the tuition fee for a degree and takes less than two years for a truly committed student.

At a time when the cost of education has gone high, with no guaranteed returns on investments, it breaks a heart to see universities failing to be innovative. Or being too slow to adapt to new technologies and ways of doing things. The Commission for Higher Education remains an anachronistic body, whose good intentions are a mismatch to their ability to ensure the quality they claim to control.

I think we need to re-examine the curriculum and quickly adapt to the 21st century and the needs of the younger generation, cognizant of the environment they have grown up in, their exposure to technology, and the new world order. Our universities, especially public universities, take so long to adapt, partly because the old professors in charge rarely want to update their knowledge and skills. Or there is no incentive to encourage that kind of progressive thinking. Private universities, especially those for the rich, are progressive and have a student-centric approach, that makes them cool for students and middle-class parents.

Secondly, whereas I admit that time spent at university is good for individual development, and exposure and helps to learn to live with others, as universities tend to be diverse, we need to shorten the learning duration. Some BA degrees should take 2 and a half years to 3 years to complete. Our curriculum is full of baggage. I recently looked at the 45+ units I undertook at the University of Nairobi and nearly half of them were superfluous, and the remaining half were unnecessarily meaty. We can do away with superfluous ones, or pair them well with others, and try to enrich the relevant ones accordingly and suitably to the future we are building.

Thirdly, we need to make universities to be cool again. Back in the day, there were social events, like the Kenyatta University Cultural Week, sports competitions, professional student bodies like AISEC and such, artists performing to students, thinkers holding talks, and other ways that can make it cool to be a student. Theatres for performing arts, recreational facilities, and other ways that Gen Z can celebrate their studentships. We can't have universities with metallic beds like students in high school, and hostels that were last painted when Dr. Zachary Onyonka was the Minister of Education, unpaved roads like it is a village high school on the slopes of Kapsabet. Make universities cool, though these may need some proper investment.

Thirdly, make university education make sense. Can universities be a pathway to employment or entrepreneurship? Yes. A university should read the future. There are so many opportunities in areas like Climate Change, Robotics, and AI, and all these will need an interdisciplinary approach to solving future crises. Can universities come up with new programs? In the past, new degree programs such as BAs in Disaster Management, Hospitality, and Procurement have been created. Universities need to move faster and create new programs for new problems.

Fourth, there is space for online courses. They can learn a thing or two from Arizona State University which offers several online degree programs with documented success. Add to these, specialized short courses on stuff like filmmaking, creative writing, catering, and photography, that can come with a certificate or a diploma but are more driven by offering the skill itself than the papers, and they can offer a short-term reprieve in terms of finances, while giving young students or late learners a chance to acquire skills from a recognized institution.

Fifth, post-graduate studies remain underutilized as universities have failed to understand that people pursuing post-graduate studies are busy adults and they should adopt systems that tap into their schedules. You can't have someone studying master's for four years, and a Ph.D. for 8 years. A full-time masters should take a year, and part-time, a maximum of 18 months, with no room for failure. A Ph.D. should take between 2 and a half years to four years maximum. If done professionally, and made to be fun, it can double enrollment rates, and bring more cash to universities. Masters and Ph.D. should be fun, but our universities make them so painful, like high school chemistry lessons with a bad teacher.

Fifth, universities have failed to tap into their alumni network, to build a cognizant network that can help in mentoring students, employing them, and donating to various courses the universities stand for. The reason here is that most universities have nothing to offer their students. Most of our student days are forgettable. Nothing memorable. ?When out, you don’t even remember you attended the institution. Can universities have a way of tapping into their rich alumni network? Allow us to access their libraries, physical and digital, let us use their facilities, like gyms, and golf, and come up with activities that make it cool to be associated with the universities.

There are so many things that are wrong with universities. But most of them can be fixed within a few short years if there is will. Otherwise, most universities risk being rendered irrelevant, and becoming stranded assets. Only those willing to adopt change, adopt a student-centric approach, embracing the future and new technologies will survive. Public universities are doing so badly in this regard.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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