Address union strikes, cash woes in higher education
Higher education, especially the running of the public universities, is in the grip of a crisis that needs to be urgently solved before everything is irreparably messed up. It is unfortunate that the situation has been allowed to deteriorate to worrying levels in recent years.
Instead of focusing on the core business of training high-level manpower, the higher education sector has become synonymous with debilitating cash woes, strikes and mismanagement. It is a shocking descent into disorganisation by institutions once revered as citadels of higher education in the region, across the continent and globally.
Learning in the public universities has been paralysed by strikes by lecturers and non-teaching staff demanding better pay and working conditions. There is, therefore, uncertainty over whether or when they will ever complete their courses.
There is also confusion over the students’ new funding model, which a court has slammed brakes on. The Universities’ Academic Staff Union and the Kenya Universities Staff Union called out their members following disagreements with the government on a pay increase deal. Also, students who were to sit for examinations this month have been left in a quagmire.
For the institutions of higher learning to remain competitive and offer the best training, the Education ministry must ensure that they get adequate funding. The division of the students into various categories determined by their families’ economic status has failed to work.
Under the old scheme through the Higher Education Loans Board, students in the same programme got equal loans irrespective of their social status. This helped to realise the promise of education as a social equaliser. Dividing students into the needy, less needy and other categories to determine loans and bursaries has only created chaos.
Some students from poor families, who could not afford to pay for the top professional courses, have chosen to go for lower ones despite their potential abilities. Many, unsure about receiving funding to continue their courses after completing their first year, have opted to drop out.
The government must address these challenges to ensure quality in the higher education sector.
