OPINION: Expand University Education, But Lets Get Serious

Tertiary education has come a long way since the days of the University of East Africa, when an education at Makerere was the dream of every high school student. Even after each country got its own university, there was an almost awe-inspiring respectability associated with the giants that came up, such as the universities of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Then came the sudden realization that our countries needed to build manpower much faster than was happening. This led to the mushrooming of public universities – initially slowly, then quickly turning into a flood – which we have continued to witness to this day.

Private universities also started coming up. At first, these were not taken seriously and many of them focused on theological areas. With time, the thirst for education led these institutions to begin offering other competitive courses, leading to a need for oversight by government authorities.

This is where the Aga Khan and similar private institutions come in. Actually, the Aga Khan University has operated in Kenya for several years, a country with a good number of reputable private universities – including the United States International University, Daystar and Strathmore universities.

Today, universities and campuses are springing up almost on a daily basis at every market corner in our major towns. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Many candidates who satisfied university entrance requirements but could not join the subsidized regular programmes of public universities due to high cut-off marks as a result of intense competition have fulfilled their dreams of a university education, thanks to this expansion.

The competition has also led to serious competition between universities, which can only be good for potential students as everyone can study at the university that is most convenient for them and whose courses best prepare them for their personal vision.

EMPLOYABLE SKILLS

But this rapid expansion has also come with severe challenges that threaten to roll back these gains. It is no secret that employers in the region are unhappy about the quality of graduates being churned out by our universities. Indeed, studies commissioned by the Inter-University Council for East Africa and the East African Business Council have shown that many employers complain that graduates from our premier institutions not only lack employable skills, they suffer from a bad attitude as well.

From the look of things, the problem with our graduates can only get worse – at least in the foreseeable future. While numerous conferences have been held and papers prepared on how to confront the challenges facing our universities, the same issues continue being raised one year after another.

There are whole departments – both in public and private universities – that rely almost wholly on part-time lecturers. Long delays in payments to such staff have demotivated them and often led to low quality in the delivery of content and delays in the marking of examination scripts.

Moreover, because of the lack of sufficient teaching manpower, many lecturers take up teaching positions at several universities and often have to travel regularly over long distances. This is in addition to the problem of crowding, which compromises quality as lecturers struggle to cope with the huge numbers of students in some courses.

INSUFFICIENT FACILITIES

Additionally, facilities have not kept pace with this rapid expansion. There are university campuses that operate without a library where students can make further reference, and I know of one with a single bookshelf containing perhaps 100 volumes or so and where the library can hardly seat 10 students. Others have insufficient lecture rooms, with lecturers and student class representatives struggling to secure space for teaching (I have taught at some of these universities, so I know).

Of perhaps even greater concern is the lack of sufficient accommodation for the youngsters joining university. Only a week ago, a young student of Moi University was raped and killed as she walked from the university library to her nearby off-campus residence at night. The argument that universities should only care about their core business of offering education and leave issues of accommodation to market forces needs to be re-examined in the light of rising insecurity across the region.

The state of university education in East Africa would make for good comedy, if only it wasn’t such a serious matter that affects livelihoods, job performance and the region’s common future. It is time the old men and bespectacled professors heading our universities and other decision-making bodies in the education sector got back to the drawing board before the situation deteriorates any further.

By Isaac Mwangi

Via EANA