Pundits have been predicting the financial ruin of universities after the unprecedented failure of students to meet the minimum C+ magic university admission grade last year. The allegation that universities ceased to be institutes of higher learning is predicated on the parallel programme.
The KCSE exam is seen as a conveyor belt for this adventure. Critics almost make it look like the massive KCSE failures were a remedy deliberately engineered against the lowering of academic standards at and by the university.
The parallel programme is accused of being the flagship of the academy forfeiting its role for commercial gain, leading to proliferation of “meaningless paper” degrees. That some are obtained through unorthodox grading in exchange for sex or money has been the theme.
The universities are seen to be minting undeserved billions, especially when they bent over backwards to offer diploma and certificate courses. Universities treat these as “bridging courses” leading to degree study, inevitably turning bridging courses into recruitment incubators.
Minus empirical evidence, the government has joined the chorus, with the Education CS deriding university education as “massification”, and capitalisation is delayed or denied altogether.
Dons labelled as greedy cannot get a fair labour’s worth; their legitimate demand for fair pay through strikes branded clamour for more money. This has resulted in plummeting standards and suspended research. A moonlighting don has become the bane of jokes; their mitumba outfit mistaken for meanness towards self. The role of academia is no longer appreciated, in particular the contribution of university education to society.
Granted universities have expanded rather rapidly in the past 10 years. The appropriation of tertiary facilities and courses was in response to market forces and contradictory government policies. The earlier policy to have more public universities and intake was not concomitant with fiscal support.
Universities were forced to “generate” income. The income-generation syndrome ballooned, gobbled up existing tertiary institutions and led to the creation of hazardous campuses. In the meantime private universities sprouted in competition, turning higher education into a hawking business.
Without a manpower development policy, the now empty facilities are a direct result of the kind of populist piecemeal reforms lacking a global picture of the country’s education needs and goals now underway. It isn’t a gamble that a public officer should gloat about as if in a grudge fight in which basic education reforms are meant to suffocate higher education. The complementarities of basic education reform ought to be reflected with adjustments in higher education, excluding official nit-picking universities.
Yes, it was wrong to allow universities to occupy polytechnics without complementary alternatives. But revitalisation of the repellent youth and village polytechnic has been dismal; the clarion call for one polytechnic per constituency remains a promise 10 years on. And yet we’ve bastardised the polytechnic to the extent no one wants to associate with it, even when government offers equipment and tuition fees.
Given the circumstances, the intermediary universities' intervention to quench the thirst for higher education of thousands shouldn’t be ridiculed. The university has ensured that the “failed” talented KCSE student has been able to “bridge” the gap between exams and knowledge by going through certificate, diploma and finally getting a degree. These graduates are basically the competency cadre discarded by the elitist exam system that we are struggling to reform.
Unfortunately, the current reform approach will produce a large pool of this cadre yearning for degrees if the loopholes aren’t sealed at the tertiary level. The idea that a talented few will henceforth find placement in universities and the rest loiter in tertiary institutions is misinformed. We cannot plan to increase the transition rates at basic level without building absorption capacity at tertiary and university level.
And we cannot reinvent the polytechnic by pruning it from the university. It’s up to government to reform the education sector to relieve universities of the burden of offering certificate and diploma courses. But that cannot be done by denying universities the space they already occupy. The solution lies in making the polytechnic an attractive career choice by modernising facilities, courses and delivery.
Communications, Publications and Conflict Management Specialist, University of Nairobi