- Public Universities Vice Chancellors Committee chairperson Geoffrey Muluvi called on his colleagues to be innovative in securing alternative funding.
- Muluvi, who is the South Eastern Kenya University VC, said financial sustainability is not a Kenyan problem but a global one.
Underfunding by the government has been the major factor that has led public universities to incur huge and unsustainable debts, vice chancellors from all the 35 public universities said on Friday.
This has led to the deteriorating standards of university education in the country, they said.
The VCs dismissed the blame that the state had placed on them.
On Thursday, the government said mismanagement is to blame for the cash crunch that the public varsities face.
“The level of debt was not created by mismanagement. This is the work of underfunding over the years,” Egerton University VC Isaac Kibwage said.
He spoke on the sidelines of the first biennial Kenya Universities Funding Conference in Mombasa.
Egerton University is one of the worst affected tertiary institutions that is sinking under debt.
However, Kibwage expressed optimism that prudent steps agreed upon by the institutions at the conference will help turn the situation around.
He said rightsizing the staff is one of the innovative ways that they use to tackle the cash crunch.
“You cannot lay off people because that needs money. What we do is called rightsizing. We can let one expertise go and replace them with one who has two different expertise,” Kibwage said.
On Thursday, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu said public universities are indebted to the tune of Sh56 billion in staff pensions and statutory deductions such as PAYE (Pay As You Earn) and NHIF.
This, Machogu said, is a threat to the universities’ ability to perform their primary mandate of teaching and research.
“Many of the universities face challenges in paying staff salaries and their suppliers. The debts continue to pile by the day,” the CS said.
On Friday, the university dons said the debts keep on piling because they earn interest.
The government said the acquisition of unnecessary properties and projects that take too long to be completed is also a contributing factor to the financial woes.
On Friday, during his presentation, senior deputy director in the National Treasury John Mose said public universities should prioritise short-term projects that take little time to be completed.
This way, he said, the project could start earning the university money within a shorter time.
“Some projects take up to 10 years to complete. Over this time, some of the costs double. Why don’t you do projects that will take two years to complete and then start earning you money?” he told the VCs.
Public Universities Vice Chancellors Committee chairperson Geoffrey Muluvi called on his colleagues to be innovative in securing alternative funding.
Muluvi, who is the South Eastern Kenya University VC, said financial sustainability is not a Kenyan problem but a global one.
Kisii University VC John Akama said the continued reduction in funding of the public universities over the recent years has been the start of the downfall of university education.