KU is not broke, says VC Wainaina

 @Yobramos4        

Kenyatta University is not broke, and it is doing well ‘under the circumstances’, vice chancellor Paul Wainaina has said.

He said, however, the university’s student population has reduced from 75,000 to 60,000.

KU has shut three campuses – Nyeri and Kericho in Kenya and Kigali in Rwanda.

Wainaina said though there is a cash crunch among the Big Seven public universities, KU has put in place measures that have helped it to sustain itself.

“We came up with some operations, including reducing our spending, and that meant we had to merge departments, close some campuses and close some of our IGAs [income generating activities],” Wainaina said.

He spoke to journalists on the sidelines of the 44th Kenya Secondary School Heads Association annual conference at the Kenya School Revenue Administration in Mombasa.

The university has pension, sacco arrears amounting to Sh1 billion, which the VC said they are working towards clearing.

Wainaina linked the cash crunch in Kenyan public universities to the tough measures introduced by former Education CS Fred Matiang’i in 2017, that led to a significant decline in performance in the KCSE exam.

He said most varsities are sustained mostly by the parallel programmes offered.

The IGAs only provide a small fraction of the funds universities get to run the institutions, he said.

After the poor performance of schools in the 2017 KCSE exam, the number of privately-sponsored drastically reduced, reducing the revenues.

“The students who were admitted to universities were government-sponsored. We did not have excess students," he said.

“The universities did not receive students to bring in money. Our finances reduced yet the government was not able to chip in.”

This hurt the programmes that had been started.

The university staff strike in 2017, also played a key role in contributing to the current cash crunch.

The government was unable to negotiate CBAs for the staff.

“They were unable to give us money and therefore the staff union decided to go on strike. It was a long strike. We had students in campuses but nobody to teach them,” the VC said.

This, Wainaina said, meant the students were using university facilities which incurred bills, including water, electricity and accommodation, with no classes taking place.

“After the strike, students came back without paying anything. They had already paid the fees and accommodation," the VC said.

“We had to take them back and to take them through one semester without asking them for money. For KU, it really took a toll on our finances.” 

Despite the negotiations between the union and the government, it was not able to deliver the money.

This led to a lot of arrears in terms of pension and insurance, among other things.

Statutory payments that the university was to make could not be remitted.

“We were not able to pay our dues in terms of KRA and pensions because it is the government that is supposed to be giving us the money to pay,” Wainaina said.

At some point, KU used to generate 60 per cent of the university’s budget.

In 2016, for example, the budget had moved to Sh6.1 billion with the government providing only 40 per cent of the budget through capitation.