Reform varsities to make them effective and viable

The Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) has made wide reaching recommendations that seek to revolutionise education in the country. The proposals affect all levels of education, from the lowest to the highest. A raft of recommendations have been made for universities and from the look of things, they will leave them better off.

Some of them include downsizing, mergers of universities and the scrapping of some top managerial positions. Indeed, some of these positions contribute little, if anything, to the betterment of education in the institutions of higher learning.

Some have simply become drain holes through which funds that would have improved learning are lost. It is never easy to initiate change, especially that which adversely affects the livelihoods of people. We must however be ready to bite the bullet in order to effectively arrest the dip in educational standards and improve the financial statuses of these institutions.

Bloated workforces that translate into huge recurrent expenditures deny universities research and development funds, yet research is the backbone of any serious university. Sadly, most of our universities have been reeling under financial strain and mismanagement. The PWPER recommendations could provide the much-needed antidote. Merging unviable universities, as has been proposed, could be a good way of reinvigorating them through pooling of resources.

In March this year, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu said public universities had incurred debts amounting to Sh56 billion in pension and statutory deductions even as he also admitted that the government is unable to provide 80 per cent funding for every student who joins public universities.

Notably, Moi, Egerton, Kenyatta and Nairobi universities were in the news over their financial woes. These debts were occasioned by, among other things, low government funding, ambitious expansion programmes and bloated work forces of non-teaching staff. Any idea that can help put our universities on the right footing should be explored. The recommendations of PWPER should be accorded the attention that they deserve.