Kaimenyi calls crisis meeting over ‘half-baked’ graduates
Education secretary Jacob Kaimenyi has invited professional bodies and the Commission for University Education (CUE) for a crisis meeting on Kenya’s deteriorating higher education standards.
CS Kaimenyi explained the the meeting is aimed at plugging qualities holes that had given rise to conflicts between the parties.
The meeting is expected to address issues surrounding the suspension of engineering, law, medicine and pharmacy courses in a number of public universities.
“The stakeholders meeting between all these parties will be held soon so that we discuss the best way forward and address the concerns of over children,” said Prof Kaimenyi.
However, Prof Kaimenyi maintained that professional bodies have no overriding mandate when it comes to quality assurance in universities as it’s the mandate of CUE.
“CUE is on top of things. We have also told them address these issues and I believe it will be done,” added the Cabinet secretary.
Kenya School of Law’s director Patrick Lumumba admitted that the quality of education at the university level is below the required standards.
“We have lowered the standards to lower minimum, provided you can pay,” observed Prof Lumumba and blames the crisis on reduction of funding to the universities by the government.
He said universities have been compelled to mount programmes for revenue purposes. He said focus on revenue lowered standards, noting the quality of education has gone down over the years.
“The bulk of students who are admitted to the profession, and it’s not only in the legal profession, are not the very best and we must admit that there are a lot of students going into this profession because of peer pressure.
“We must deal with the question of numbers vis-a-vis the number of facilities going forward,” he observed.