The Kenya Law School this week failed 80 per cent of the 1,505 students who sat the bar exam (see P6).
Some units like Trial Advocacy have a 94 per cent pass rate but others like Conveyancing have a 40 per cent pass rate. The problem is that the students have to pass all nine units and keep paying Sh10,000 per resit.
Students are in an uproar, complaining about the cost of resits and incompetent teaching.
But architects and chartered accountants also have very high failure rates for their professional qualifications. These exams are supposed to be tough, they are not supposed to be easy.
With the privatisation of higher education over the last 30 years, students have come to expect that they should pass because they have paid.
In 2017 the Council of Legal Education closed the law department at Moi University because the academic standards were not good enough. Maybe this is the problem – that we are over-producing under-qualified graduates.
The Kenya School of Law should not drop its standards just to keep students happy.
Quote of the day: “It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess that I am unable to reform myself. ”
Peter the Great
The Russian emperor died on February 8, 1725
