By Roy Hezron
Streamlining governance and management of universities, engaging a pool of relevant competent lawyers to handle court litigations and adhering to the Public Finance Management Act, 2015 are some of the interventions fronted by public universities stakeholders during the recently concluded First International Annual Conference for public universities to enable universities have a sustainable financial base.
The conference, whose theme was Sustainable Universities for National Transformation, was held between September 21 to 23, 2022 and brought together public universities chairpersons of councils, Vice-Chancellors and Principals of public universities constituent colleges.
Principal Secretary State department of University Education and Research Amb Simon Nabukwesi said the current phenomenal growth in the Universities has led to an increase in contingency liabilities and legal issues.
Other fronted interventions include undertaking thorough internal audits as well as audit by external auditors, implementing the auditors’ recommendations, ensuring that corporate social responsibility policies are developed and implemented and building capability of finance and budget officials.
Amb Nabukwesi also suggested that public universities should develop and implement a policy of raising resources from other avenues like competitive research and entrepreneurship grants, alumni associations, community education, community service and business investments.
The varsities were also urged to ensure revenue collection software is in place to manage revenue collection.
The universities should also ensure that outstanding university fee is collected before students sit for their examinations. They should also employ revenue collector staff to manage revenue collection and encourage the teaching and research staff to pursue consultancy and research projects.
Interventions for public debt management include: setting priorities by identifying the activities which are crucial to achieving organizational objectives, adopting new approaches to resource allocation and resource utilization, establishing a better internal budgeting policy and creating cost awareness as a conscious routine in management, and developing a Debt Management Strategy (DMS).
Proposed interventions to leverage on collaborations and linkages include: addressing challenges like inadequate policies, bureaucracy, outdated research infrastructure, stiff competition from other knowledge-based institutions, weak linkages to industry, weak research portfolios, differences in organizational culture, rules around intellectual property and the ability to achieve organizational thrust from innovation.
Others are enhancing collaborations in the STI, collaborations targeting quality university graduates and exploiting funding opportunities for collaborations in the University education sector.
Prof. Geoffrey Muluvi, the Vice Chancellor of South Eastern Kenya University (SEKU) and Chairman Vice Chancellors Committee of Public Universities said the conference was meant to develop aspirations and shared visions in the areas of governance, legislation and other regulations that can support Public University Education to ensure efficiency in governance and optimal operations and functions.
“Our education sector envisions a globally competitive education, training, research and innovation for sustainable development,” said Prof Muluvi.
He added: “The sector’s overall goal is to increase access to education and training; improve quality and relevance of education; reduce inequality as well as leverage on knowledge and skills in science, technology and innovation for global competitiveness.”
Other objectives of the conference included establishing strategies to reduce debt and guarantee sustainability, benchmarking with the best practices across the globe on human resource and revenue generation that supports academic programmes for improved efficiency, establishing the appropriate structure for student placement and funding in Public Universities.
Planning for strategic response on the continued changes in the education sector especially in relation to implications of Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) implementation on the Universities’ curricula, and establish the roles of stakeholders in transformational Public University Education.
The conference was initially planned to take place in June 2022 but a few hours before the start of the meeting, a one-paragraph memo from the ministry through Amb. Nabukwesi cancelled the meeting.
