The role of higher education in Kenya is to generate a pool of qualified professionals with specialized skills. These professionals often have the potential to promote production and capital resources and provide national services that reflect both national and cultural heritage in Kenya. To achieve this, institutions of higher learning are expected to generate new knowledge and appreciate the pursuit of knowledge.
Policy Issue
Financial stability of public universities in Kenya has weakened amid increased enrolment from 546,699 in 2020/2021 to 562,066 in the academic year 2021/2022 and was projected to 600,000 in 2022/2023. High academic staff to student ratio of 1:30 against the recommended ratio of between 1:18 and 1:10 has also compromised performance of public universities. With the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, universities were forced to take up e-learning, a platform they did not prepare for, and which strained the available infrastructure. In addition, underfunding and resource gap has more than doubled in academic years 2020/2021 and 2021/22 amidst increasing education administration costs and increased student enrolments, thus leaving the burden to institutions and students. This has been worsened by pending bills amounting to Ksh 62 billion as of February 2022.
A comparison between public and private universities infrastructure shows that private universities excel in library, information, community and technology infrastructure. A study assessing infrastructure in Strathmore University and the Technical University of Kenya found that while both institutions had library and ICT infrastructure, quality and access were varied. The findings indicated that challenges such as low Internet access, high costs of maintaining and upgrading resources, lack of access to contemporary study material, vandalism and inadequate funding and staffing are major constraints to research quality in Kenyan institutions. Additionally, recent focus by the government has been on increasing access for transitioning students to universities, but the infrastructural capacity of the institutions does not correspond with the growing number of students.
The Commission for University Education (CUE) in its University Standards and Guidelines regulations requires that the ratio of full-time teaching staff to students be 1:10 in Applied Sciences, 1:15 in Arts and Humanities, 1:7 in Medical and Allied Sciences, 1:10 in Pure and Natural Sciences and 1:18 in Social Sciences. Additionally, the ratio for full-time staff to part-time staff for any programme is recommended to be 2:1, which is not the case in many universities. The CUE report released in 2018 showed that student to staff ratios were higher than recommended, with some programmes such as social sciences having a ratio of 40:1, even with the inclusion of part-time academic staff.
The transition from undergraduate to graduate studies and to postgraduate studies is rather slow. The 2015 State of University Education in Kenya Report by the Commission for University Education shows that the ratio of transition to Masters degree is quite low at 6:1 compared to that of developed countries such as Canada where the ratio is 2:1. The gap between the number of undergraduate students in training and those on graduate and doctorate programmes highlights a challenge in advanced education in Kenya. It also reduces the number of qualified academic staff available to train undergraduate and graduate students.
Current Interventions
Public universities have continued to benefit from government capitation, which has been slightly increasing over time. For the financial year 2018/2019, the total allocation was Ksh 38.15 billion. This further increased to Ksh 41.18 billion for the financial year 2019/2020 and Ksh 41.97 billion for financial year 2020/2021. It further increased to Ksh 43.84 billion and Ksh 44.02 billion for 2022/2023. Currently, government capitation covers approximately 57% of students instead of the targeted of 80%. This amount is largely used for recurrent expenditure, and little is left to improve the quality standards. This has led to insufficient staffing and lackluster physical resources and infrastructure. Amidst the financial constraints, the government through CUE has continued to mainstream quality assurance practices in universities by encouraging improvement in quality of university programmes.
The universities also raise funding from the programmes they undertake. The introduction of parallel programmes in 1998 implied enhanced incomes among institutions of higher learning in Kenya. This programme supported up to 50% of university total budget and enabled universities to attract and retain teaching and non-teaching staff using enhanced income as an incentive. Further, these funds were used to set up satellite campuses to accommodate increased student enrolment. Over this period, quantitative expansion of universities was realized at the expense of quality. The lowering of university entry points to C+ for government-funded learners implied a decline in the number of self-sponsored students. This led to reduction in the biggest revenue generators.
Since 2016, over 14.8% of total government sponsored students are hosted by private universities in Kenya. This follows a government directive through Sessional Paper No. 14 of 2012 to place government sponsored students in private universities. This was necessitated by the need to reform the financially troubled universities by expanding the government student sponsorship to private universities in Kenya. However, private universities have decried the low funding, which does not match the number of students enrolled. To finance this arrangement, private universities need at least Ksh 5.6 billion, but the government only provides Ksh 2.4 billion. Enrollment of students in private universities with government funding was adopted by the government in 2016 in a bid to expand access to higher education and fill the capacity gap by public universities. This initiative reportedly reduced costs of educating students by 50% while giving them access to quality education and infrastructure.
Lecturers are, at the very least, required to have qualifications above the level they are teaching. The CUE issued guidelines in 2018 that required all lecturers to hold PhD degrees and have a certain number of publications. Those with Masters degrees, for instance, were required to have at least three years teaching experience and be enrolled in a PhD programme at the time of announcing the new guidelines. There needs to be a review of compliance in all universities to determine how many lecturers are qualified to teach and deliver quality education.
Elevation of colleges and polytechnics to fully accredited universities has led to increased transition rates from secondary to tertiary education, especially for students qualified to pursue degree programmes. The move also expanded the space for university education in Kenya while striving to maintain the quality of graduates entering the job market.
The move to provide loans to all students, by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB), and to increase enrolment and retention of needy students in university education is excellent. However, the process of selecting recipients and disbursing loans has been flawed, with many citing poor verification processes. In addition, students have cited that the amount they received was not adequate to cover their financial needs. Other students opted for part-time work to meet their financial needs after missing out on HELB disbursement which, while providing valuable experience, may prove distracting.
The significance placed on education and the various policy interventions by the government have had a limited impact in improving the performance of public universities in the country.
Gaps and Emerging Issues
The current funding model in Kenya is based on Differentiated Unit Cost (DUC), which caters for 80% of the unit cost while the remaining 20 per cent is borne by the universities and students. This arrangement places more emphasis on the number of student enrollment, and it places university programmes into 14 clusters, in each case, the cost is fixed. However, this type of financing strategy has reduced funding for large universities.
Although public universities receive government funding, there is a growing funding gap. With COVID-19, the government effected a 26% reduction in funding. Additionally, while the government is ideally required to cover 80% of the tuition burden per student, it currently covers only 49.5% of the tuition. The funding gap in public universities has increased by more than double in the last few years. Over the last years, government funds to universities through the DUC model has been declining gradually from 66.4% in the financial year 2018/2019 to as low as 48.11% in 2022. As a result, public universities are confronting a buildup of pending bills amounting to Ksh 65 billion as of February 2022 and are thus not able to meet their statutory obligations, including remittances to pension schemes, health insurance, and taxes. Universities have resorted to increasing the cost of tuition and accommodation on the students to bridge the gap.
Though students have access to the national student loan scheme provided by the HELB, its capacity is limited to funding only a small percentage of university students. During the financial 2021/2022, HELB only covered 58% of the students under Kenya Universities and Central Placement Services. This was attributed to inadequate funding from the exchequer and low repayment by former beneficiaries, with over Ksh 9.9 billion defaults.
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) have become a major point of focus, encouraging students to pursue STEM-related courses and enhance creativity and grow a community of critical thinkers. This will in turn narrow the gap of demand and supply of existing technical skills to ensure schools equip the students with necessary technical skills for the job market. As the country promotes ST&I to drive a knowledge-based economy, this is yet to be reflected in enrolment rates and courses offered. Most programmes offered in Kenyan public and private universities are highly skewed towards arts and humanities rather than STEM. This may be because the administration of these courses is more financially demanding than arts and humanities since they require infrastructure, technology and laboratory equipment.
Majority of undergraduate students opted for programmes in arts and humanities at 16.3% in 2018, life and physical science at 11.3%, business administration at 10.9% and agriculture and livestock at 10.8%. This is particularly prevalent among private universities, mainly attributed to the discernment that agricultural courses are not equally competitive in the job market. This has been exacerbated by misconception that agriculture is a career of last resort, attracts low monetary benefit and one of drudgery.
Uptake for agricultural courses in public universities is still remarkable, with the subject among the four top courses considered by students, inclusive of humanities and arts, life and physical sciences, and health and welfare. Students may, however, miss out on taking agricultural courses due to the slight increase in cut-off points for enrolment in the last few years. Egerton University, for instance, has increased the cut-off mark for agricultural education and extension up to 33.914 in the 2022/2023 academic year from 30.905 in 2018/19. This tends to limit the number of students who can take the course, especially due to the scrapping of self-sponsored students who may not qualify but take the courses. There is need to implement innovative governance structures in Kenyan public universities that are participatory and democratic in decision-making. These will shield the institutions from interference from external stakeholders, while still keeping them accountable internally and externally. Partnership structures between universities and stakeholders will strengthen their ability to offer quality education, research and effective administration to thrive.
Conclusion and Way Forward
The higher education space in Kenya is characterized by major issues that trace back to inadequate funding. there is need for universities to actively seek for alternative funding to boost their revenues through contract research, partnerships, talent development, innovations, consultancies and other income generating activities as some of them have implemented these initiatives since the government started reducing funding allocation.
To encourage a more effective way of utilizing the available public resources prudently among universities, the government could consider pegging performance to budgeting. This would provide financial incentives for improved financial management by universities.
There is need to encourage students to pursue STEM courses to meet job market demands for innovative solutions to modern problems. This can be done through incentives such as scholarship programmes and fellowships that sponsor students to these courses. The government, and private research organizations in STEM, can provide these scholarships and practical experience in form of internships. Public-private partnerships with research organizations and universities may build the infrastructural and financial capacity of the higher education institutions to offset the costs of training in STEM courses. The implementation of the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) is a great stem in ensuring that students are familiarized with STEM subjects from a young age, which will encourage them to pursue the courses at the tertiary level.
Authors: Silas Samoei, Young Professional
Winnie Makau, Young Professional
