HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM ON THE OFFERING

By the year 2015 students meeting the university minimum entry requirement will be at the peak of 230,118 without including mature entry students, those who could not be admitted the previous years, or those who have attained alternative admission standards through experiential and prior learning.

Currently only 20 percent of those who qualify get admitted into local universities every year. Some experts suggested that expansion of the 13 constituent colleges, established two years ago, could help deal with the admissions backlog in public universities. But the colleges seem not responding to this challenge. They are grappling with inadequate facilities, making them ineffective in meeting their goal of improving access.

This reality necessitated the government to compose a taskforce to hatch a series of new strategies to reform higher education sector, which call for new university campuses to be created in rural areas, specializing in assigned fields, increasing funding to enable more students enrolled in the coming years - to realize the much-needed human capital boost to the Kenyan economy's key drivers, agriculture and tourism.

The new strategy will see universities, all of which are currently clustered in urban areas, spread their wings to more rural areas and offer locally appropriate courses such as dry-land farming, tourism and hospitality, marine sciences and environmental resources.

The demand for higher education has soared, as “high quality education transforms individuals and societies in ways that reduce poverty and increase the global competitiveness of nations,” states the taskforce report titled “Development of the National Strategy for University Education.”

“The strategy for achieving such an increase include establishment of Open University and new universities, expanding existing universities, establishment of campus colleges of exiting universities in strategic areas; and upgrading middle-level colleges to degree-granting institutions in respective specialized areas,” the report points out.

However “in expanding universities through the creation of campus colleges, measures should be taken to avoid acquisition by universities of existing tertiary and middle-level institutions that are so critical...in ensuring continued supply of required technical skills.”

We are following the foot steps of institutions of higher learning like UNISA which has over 200,000 students across the world through open learning with lower costs, says Prof Shem Wandiga the chairman of the taskforce, comparing to Kenya's currently enrolled 90,000 students (who are projected to hit a mark of 450,000 by 2015) in seven public universities, 13 recently-established constituent colleges attached to the state universities, and 23 private universities, according to the regulatory Commission for Higher Education.

In this new strategy the Commission for Higher Education (CHE) will be strengthened and restructured to be responsible for all higher education quality control and assurance. Thus, public universities will no longer be founded on parliamentary act rather through a charter just like their private counterparts.

Prof Wandiga says the strategy is envisioning an education that will induce massive training of postgraduate graduates students to fortify research and teaching at the university level, to produce thinkers who can create, innovate and add value to existing products and services; and graduates who are skilled enough to work in existing and start up industries.

For a country that is matching forward to a knowledge driven economy notwithstanding that Kenya's industrial growth has stagnated, according to Wandiga, there is a serious need to create a favorable investing environment where the industry and the university should link up to produce graduates who have relevant knowledge for the existing industries.

There is an urgent need to “review and re-align the curriculum for each degree programme offered at each public university,” states another report by the Institute of Policy Analysis & Research dubbed “Radical Reform for Kenya's Education Sector: Implementing Policies Responsive to Vision 2030,” “with view to minimizing duplication and redundancy, and enhance availability and expand such programmes that add value to the national development agenda in the context of Vision 2030.”

We have created open ended educational policy whereby every student has an opportunity to attain the higher educational skills possible, says Julius Muia, secretary, National Economic and Social Council (NESC), through Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and middle level colleges. Because “the current system of admission based purely on grades attained at KCSE promotes meritocracy and transparency. However, it does not necessarily promote geographical or socio-economic equity of access,” the report says.

However, fears are rife in education circles that the expansion plan, if not well executed, could further erode higher education quality. "There is a shortage of doctoral level lecturers as a result of rapid expansion and brain drain," says the strategy.

"The quality of learning in some universities has been declining, having a negative effect on undergraduate and graduate degree programmes in science, engineering and technology."