The Commission for University Education (CUE) has weighed in and developed stringent regulations to standardise the sector and taken drastic decisions on universities. On his part, the Education Cabinet Secretary has issued a directive stopping the establishment of campuses.
We also need to learn from the experiences of South Africa. The University of South Africa (Unisa) is defined as a mega university with over 480,000 students.
Already Kenya sits in the best position to attract many students to an ODL university because of its strategic position in the East African region as an economic hub. With proper planning, an ODL university should develop a strong staff development policy that would ensure superior pedagogical skills for teaching of a diverse student community.
The past three decades have seen a major expansion and transformation of university education in Kenya. We have grown from one university in 1984 to 23 public universities and 10 constituent colleges in 2016. An additional 36 private universities have been licensed to operate in the country. Despite these developments in university education, we are yet to solve problems of access, affordability and quality.
Our universities suffer from, among other things, limited funding, de-motivated staff and lack of a research culture. Due to limited funding, universities have had to find alternative ways of meeting their financial obligations. This has, in some cases, led to crude competition for students through establishment of many campuses all over.
