Proposal to merge Helb, varsity Fund meets opposition

Education stakeholders in the university sector have opposed a move that is likely to see two funding bodies merged.

In his education charter, President William Ruto proposed to merge the Higher Education Loans Board and the Universities Funding Board.

The mandate of Helb is to source for funds and provide financing (through loans, scholarships and bursaries) to Kenyans pursuing higher education in institutions of higher learning in and outside Kenya

While the universities' funding board is mandated to develop transparent and fair criteria for the allocation of funds to public universities and issue conditional grants to private universities.

UF also apportions funds to public universities and issuance of conditional grants to private universities in accordance with criteria established

University of Nairobi Student Association (UNSA) chairperson Melvin Thogo said the plan will not be a solution to the funding crisis in universities.

"While this may look attractive at face value, this is the easiest way to disenfranchise students of this fund," Thogo said.

The UNSA chairperson was making her submissions to the presidential Working Party on education reforms on Friday.

"Amalgamating the funds means the university administration will directly receive the money and then disburse them to students," Thogo said.

If this is adopted, Thogo said universities will spend the funds disbursed to cater for other expenditures.

"The university administration will obviously use these funds to pay for their expenditures first before disbursing them to the students. This means the amount disbursed to the students might be reduced or not disbursed at all," she said.

Lecturers have also opposed the move, saying the merger is likely to interfere with the transparency of the funds disbursed.

UASU secretary at the UoN chapter Maloba Wekesa said merging the mandate of Helb and UF will be a huge mistake.

Maloba said the two bodies should be left to operate independently within their mandate.

" It would be ill-advised if the Higher Educations Loans Board, which is burdened with the logistics of student loans, were to be merged with the University Fund.," Wekesa said.

The union secretary added that university funds should be budgeted and funnelled through the University Fund semi-autonomously from the Ministry.

Education CS Ezekiel Machogu had previously urged public universities to generate their own income.

But Wekesa said universities still need government support to initiate their own sources of income.

"The Government should consider building capacities for Universities to generate more resources to supplement Government funding," he said.

This, Wekesa says can be done through entail establishing enterprise centres at the Universities, e.g. Hospitals, Engineering Workshops, Horticultural centres, IT hubs, and Language Centres.

Still, in the generation of its own revenue, UF CEO Geoffrey Monari clarified that the move is not sustainable.

Monari said businesses that are run by universities end up collapsing due to the financing challenge.

"For example, we have Maseno University which has a hotel. It is because they lack expertise for the business and lengthy costly procurement processes since they are government" he said.

Monari added that it is difficult to run university businesses because the government can not competitively engage in business unless they get waivers.

According to data acquired from the funding agency, the accumulated debt includes remittances, part-time lecturers, Sacco and contractors, among others.

The universities owe contractors Sh1.4 billion, part-time lecturers Sh4.5 billion, suppliers Sh4.8 billion and Sacco contributions Sh4.1 billion.

NSSF is owed Sh139 million, at NHIF there is Sh2 million, loan deductions worth Sh1.3 billion, pension schemes Sh18 billion and PAYE owed is Sh13 billion, while other loans have accumulated Sh10 billion.