The heading was oblique, tucked away in the inside pages, but its import was tremendous in the context of the war of attrition Education CS Fred Matiang’i is waging on certificate cheats. It said President Uhuru Kenyatta’s alma mater had embargoed his records as a student at Amherst College from public access.
It is strange, and a first, to read that “Amherst has also declined to release President Kenyatta’s grades, saying it does not reveal such information due to personal privacy considerations” in a Kenyan newspaper. This came hardly a week after another headline proclaimed that “Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has confirmed that Uhuru Kenyatta graduated from there in 1985 with a degree in economics & political science.”
Why this secrecy over the records of a public figure alumnus the university should be proud to have? It may have to do with domestic politics and the anvil Matiang’i unintentionally unleashed to nab exam thieves and cheats, which is spiralling out of control.
Not satisfied that he has slain the exam cheating dragon in basic education, the CS moved to tackle an even bigger ogre at the tertiary level. He zeroed in on universities’ suspected ‘prostitution’ of degrees to whosoever can pay the highest, especially politicians. Unfortunately, he did this innocently without covering his steps.
The magic bullet Matiang’i used to unearth the skeletons embedded in exam cheating is set to boomerang right back at the high echelons of the untouchables. If Matiang’i succeeds in outing those with fake certifications, no one knows who will be left standing. The imperative to preempt scouring of Uhuru’s student records is just an indication of how far politicos will go to safeguard the skeletons in their cupboards.
The travails of Governor Hassan Joho’s D- earned degrees and the case of MP Oscar Sudi’s alleged forgeries mark a malaise that runs deep in politics. Were the certificates held by most politicians to be recalled for re-screening, many would be found to be slurred amateur phonies.
This alone could distract Matiang’i’s focus on re-engineering university education because there isn’t a segment of society that fights so hard so selfishly for shortcuts like politicians do.
Yet, it was always coming, this implosion in university education. It started innocently as a process of opening access to university education. Given the premium attached to certificates, many in employment flocked to universities to get degrees to increase their chances of promotion and better-paying jobs. That’s how the MBA famously became a brand among the middle class before the arena diversified into all manner of “parallel” certificate, diploma and degree courses, and most secured on the cheap.
Other than recurrent medical expenditure, the typical Kenyan family heaviest investment is in education. This is matched by an expansive government budget. Education has been elevated to a kind of fetish without which you’re ostracised. Invariably, we’ve sought to clean our politics by putting a premium on education qualifications. Unfortunately, this has been circumvented by watering down and disputing its impact on good leadership.
It’s Parliament that has sabotaged the ascendancy of education as a leadership quality. It exempted politicians from acquiring higher minimum standards of education in a manner that postponed applications for education credentials and prompted the mad rush for counterfeits. A whole counterfeit industry has grown around certification so much so that examining and validation institutions are part of the corrupt citadel.
I cringe at the idea that the same committee of yore in the Education ministry will sit to ratify the validity or otherwise of the certificates candidates in the August elections will be presenting to them.
This is the committee compromised beyond redemption that certifies ability to speak Kiswahili as a qualification since the 1970s. It is the same team working with the Commission for University Education in 2013 that wouldn’t authenticate degree certificates for some candidates on the first try but did on a second re-submission attempt.
In sum, the accreditation system is rotten to the core. If Matiang’i has to complete his mission, then he should restructure the management of the accrediting bodies and recall all certificates issued from 1965 for validation.