Plans to establish Kenya’s first open university in top gear
Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms chairman Raphael Munavu addresses journalists at the University of Nairobi on November 11, 2022.
Plans to establish Kenya’s first open university are in top gear, seven years after the announcement.
The journey towards the university will be known when the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) submits its final report next month.
The National Open University of Kenya will provide distance learning and allow more students to enrol for academic programmes since it will not be bound by physical infrastructure.
An open university allows flexibility, where students study at home and at their convenience, using pre-packaged learning materials and online resources.
The idea, first fronted more than 20 years ago, appeared to have taken a turn in 2016 when then-Education Minister Fred Matiang’i said the Cabinet had approved its establishment.
Dr Matiang’i said the open university would expand access to higher education at a lower cost and explained the legal and policy interventions put in place to promote higher education.
The interventions include revising laws to give powers to the Commission for University Education (CUE) to regulate quality and standards.
The excitement was palpable as the idea came at a time East Africa was pushing for the creation of a common higher education zone, where students could obtain admission to any of the region’s universities, pay fees at local rates, and subsequently, be eligible for employment in any of the countries.
President William Ruto told the PWPER to come up with ways of realising the dream.
Many Kenyans want to know what “the university in the cloud” is all about.
With a proposed budget of Sh38.7 billion, ($314 million) it could easily be among the top flight institutions of higher learning in the country, operating virtually with the capability of handling data from hundreds of thousands of students across the globe.
“It is too early to talk about it but we’re firming up some areas. Once we finish things up, perhaps the end of the week, we’ll reach you,” said Prof Raphael Munavu who heads the PWPER.
The best example of an open university is the University of South Africa. It accounts for 12.8 per cent of degrees conferred by the country’s 23 public universities and has almost half a million students drawn more than 130 countries.
In East Africa, Tanzania pioneered the model in 1993. The university has more than 70,000 students.
Others in Africa are the National Open University of Nigeria, the Open University of Mauritius, Laweh University College in Ghana, Open University of Sudan, Zambian Open University, Zimbabwe Open University, the International Open University (Nigeria), Universite General Lansana Conte in Guinea and Botswana Open University.
Like others, the open university will have to be established by a charter or a letter of interim authority. Other details will be the infrastructure in place and the locations, including of constituent colleges.
