Employers have decried poorly trained graduates ill-suited for the jobs they are applying for.
It is now possible, crazy as it is, for a D- student at the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education to copy and paste things at the university level till it amounts to what can only be a questionable PhD.
The grade attained at the KCSE level is treated casually or bleached over time and that is exactly where the rain started beating our higher education system. The most accurate indicator of brains or otherwise is the Form 4 certificate.
At this level, students who study do very well even later at higher levels of learning. Two other categories also emerge and these are the same ones who give education a bad name.
There are spoon-fed and are later unable to cope in the courses they are called to pursue at the university and are discontinued or join the sex-for-grades bandwagons, embrace copy/paste capabilities of technology or device all manner of methods to cheat to see themselves through.
The universities themselves do not seem to care. Education at this level is no longer about benefiting from the ‘fountains of knowledge’ but have become commercial enterprises keen to turn a tidy profit.
The government no longer gives grants for research and development to universities; the funds are limited where they are made available and so universities have been left to their own devices. Nobody cares to ensure the government-decreed C+minimum entry requirement is observed.
There are bleached D minuses that are now pursuing all manner of professions. Spruced KCSE grades get us questionable qualifications. Life is about upgrades but some standards must be maintained.
Social commentator, Nakuru
