The low standards of higher education in Kenya is now an open secret, acknowledged by all and shouted out from the mountain tops by the mass media! It has been known, in some circles, since those days of experimentation of the quota system by the KANU (baba na mama) government of the '80s. The introduction of the 8-4-4 system forced down our throats by the Breton Woods twins through their cure-all prescription of STAPs did not help the situation either. We now know why the graduates of our universities both public and private are coming out half baked or uncooked all together! Considering that they are going through their courses without ever being supervised by a professor. This is an addition of salt onto injury in view of the fact that most of these graduates are products of the 8-4-4 system of education for whose jury is still out deliberating its efficiency/competency.
Others being churned out by the cog wheels in the universities are beneficiaries of the ill planned, ill implemented, exam system overseen by the KNEC where exam cheating is the norm rather than the exception at all levels. These graduates eventually end up in government board rooms where some issues/policies being deliberated are the issuance(s) of charters to tertiary colleges to start degree courses-they don't consider how poorly or well placed a college is to allow it to upgrade to a university!
As long as a college has buildings, students and boasts of a bank account, it can be a university! Other colleges have been upgraded into universities to please/appease ethnic populations' aspirations and in the process secure political patronage, all these, to the detriment of the education standards.
Large populations of university grade school leavers should not be used to water down the quality of university education. These mushroom university colleges should be merged, with respect to logistics and viable institutions of higher learning thereby formed and the multitudes of university entrants absorbed according to merit.
We could also try and discourage professors from joining politics and pay them well to encourage them to remain in the lecture theatres. Research funds could also be allocated for in our national budget to be allocated to performing professors.
I stand to be corrected.
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