Blaming this crisis on declining student enrolment is not only intellectually dishonest; it is policy idiocy. Student numbers don’t plummet overnight.
This is the product of years of poor planning and a government policy that diverts students – and funds – from public universities to private ones.
The irony is painful: public universities are laying off staff for lack of students, yet taxpayers continue footing bills for students in private institutions.
This policy is not only irresponsible and unsustainable; it is absurd and must be urgently reversed.
The university, like many of its public counterparts – take a cursory glance at the sorry state of UoN, Egerton, TUK and KU, to name but a few – has long operated as a conveyor belt, churning out degrees with minimal regard for intellectual acuity, innovation, or relevance.
The collapse of the once-thriving self-sponsored programmes merely exposed what was already rotting: an overgrown academic structure built on financial quicksand and pedagogical decay.
Kenya’s higher education system is in free fall and the chaos is running on steroids. We must urgently reimagine leadership in our universities before the damage becomes irreversible.
To start with, restructure University Councils – the highest decision-making organs – currently stacked with people who have no idea what a university does.
The academic folly of politicians hand-picking members of university councils surely needs reimagining. And while you’re at it, tell the Moi University Council that reform means renewal, not destruction. Cutting off lecturers is not a solution. It’s an obituary in the making.
The University Academic Staff Union (Uasu) has rightly raised the alarm. When contacted, the secretary general accused the Moi University management and Council of flouting International Labour Organization conventions that mandate genuine consultation before redundancy.
“We responded to their intention of redundancy and provided prerequisites for engagement. They never got back to us. That’s a breach,” Constantine Wasonga said.
Such unilateralism violates due process and undermines accountability and dialogue.
“Consultations have to be genuine, seeking concurrence rather than pretextual, merely going through the motions to tick legal boxes,” the SG concluded.
Oversight institutions like the Ministry of Education and the Commission for University Education equally stand accused. They have stood idly by as universities sank into reckless borrowing, duplicated programmes and unmanageable staffing.
At Moi, the recommended 70:30 teaching-to-non-teaching staff ratio is reversed, with academic staff now less than 30 per cent of the workforce. In such a warped structure, how can laying off lecturers be a viable solution?
Uasu, Kenya Universities Staff Union (Kusu) and Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers have every right to protest. But they must also reflect on their complicity.
Some staff benefited from inflated allowances, nepotistic promotions, ghost conferences and vanity projects. These same individuals now cry foul.
A struggle for wages that ignores the need for reform is hollow. The national leadership under Wasonga and Charles Mukhwaya (Kusu) stand at a historic crossroads. To remain relevant, unionism must evolve into an agency for transformation, not just a platform for collective bargaining.
This pivotal moment compels us to confront a fundamental question: What is the true role of a university in Kenya today? We need a radical overhaul of its higher education framework. Piecemeal tweaks won’t suffice.
Reform must start with governance: leadership appointments should be based on merit, not patronage. Curricula must evolve from theoretical repetition to applied learning. A sustainability and innovation fund is crucial to secure long-term resilience. Meanwhile, the TVET sector must be strengthened to close the skills gap that continues to widen.
The layoffs are not a solution – they are a symptom of national neglect. We cannot claim to be building a knowledge economy while letting public universities collapse under the weight of mismanagement, underfunding and irrelevance.
These layoffs represent more than job losses – they signify the slow burial of our collective intellectual future.
Moi University./FILE
