We must go beyond the competence-based framework for university education

“The purpose of higher education is to teach young people to think, to think straight, if possible; but to always think for themselves.” — Robert Hutchins

Kenyan universities are poised for far-reaching reform, courtesy of a draft Competence-Based Framework for University Education (CBFUE) that the Commission for University Education (CUE) has prepared for review and endorsement by the leadership of Kenyan universities.

Media reports indicate that the Commission has prepared a draft Competence-Based Framework for University Education (CBFUE) which, if adopted, is expected to align universities with Competency-Based Education (CBE), the blueprint for education reforms whose implementation began in 2019.

The draft proposes reforms to what students are taught, how lecturers teach, how students are assessed and the skills they are expected to demonstrate.

“What we have been doing has been content-oriented. We sit students somewhere, give them an examination where they write down the content we’ve given them and then we mark it. But now we are saying that having theory is not enough. We need to see whether they can apply the knowledge they have,” the media quoted the Chief Executive Officer of the Commission for University Education (CUE), Dr Mike Kuria, as saying.

The media indicated that the changes will require smaller classes, more staff, ICT infrastructure, curriculum reviews to avoid repetition, and revised teaching and assessment methods focused on demonstrating competence, including possible industrial involvement in assessing students.

The planned reforms are admirable. The four-year university education and training experience is not a picnic. Universities admit the crème de la crème, the very best of the best in demonstrated ability in terms of intellect and other aptitudes.

In an October 2, 2006, speech entitled The Well-educated Undergraduate, former Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Professor Alison Richard, noted:

“Cambridge is clear in its aspiration for undergraduates to be educated up to and beyond the frontiers of knowledge. Their learning focuses not only on what is already known but on scholarship and discovery, not only on acquiring knowledge but on developing their minds to be critical, analytic and inquiring.”

The aspirations Cambridge and other world-class universities have for their undergraduate students are aspirations Kenyan universities must, without equivocation, have for the students who enter their gates.

Needless to say, the purpose of university education is to develop critical thinkers out of students and nurture them into responsible and ethical citizens, aside from meeting other obligations such as preparing students for the job market.

It matters little what kind of education students have had at the lower levels of education. It matters little whether basic education was knowledge-based or skills-based. What matters is whether students are college-ready and whether they have met the benchmarks a high school student should attain before admission into university.

Higher education has pedagogical traditions that have, nevertheless, undergone centuries of rethinking and reform. Pedagogy in top-notch universities now goes beyond mastery of content; it focuses on developing the capacity for independent and critical thinking. This is not new.

Universities have long had unique pedagogies which they use to teach undergraduate students. They include tutorials, seminars, university lectures, workshops and research, among others.

The tutorial method of teaching has a distinguished pedigree. It was developed by Professor Benjamin Jowett, a classicist and Master of Balliol College, University of Oxford, who later became its Vice-Chancellor.

“It is through the tutorial system that students develop powers of independent and critical thought, analytical and problem-solving abilities, and skills in both written and oral communication and argument,” Oxford University's website states.

This is a method of study the University of Nairobi had perfected and which yours truly enjoyed in the mid-1980s. My tutorial fellow in Literature was Professor Odera Outa, and Prof Peter Wanyande was my tutorial fellow in Government.

We had lecturers in large classes but went through the same concepts or areas of learning in groups of fewer than 10 students during tutorials. Issues were canvassed through discussions, questions and answers, and back-and-forth exchanges under the guidance of the tutorial fellow.

What am I saying? I am saying that undergraduate students ought to study disciplinary knowledge that is already there and constantly evolving. It is the depth and breadth of this knowledge, properly designed and taught, that cultivates the unlimited thinking powers of students.

Content or a programme of study is not enough.

In a January 31, 2010, lecture at the Royal Society in London, England, organised by the Higher Education Policy Institute and entitled The Rise of Asia's Universities, former President of Yale University Richard C. Levin noted that world-class universities:

“… excel in the advancement of human knowledge of nature and culture; they provide the finest training to the next generation of scholars; and they provide outstanding undergraduate and professional education for those who will emerge as leaders in all walks of life.”

Universities have long been charged with the responsibility of enabling students to develop the innate powers of thinking they have demonstrated by qualifying for university education.

The prodding they are receiving from CUE, under the auspices of the proposed Competence-Based Framework for University Education (CBFUE), should simply be a reminder that professors have a higher responsibility to cultivate the cognitive powers of their students to the greatest extent possible.

Universities must enable students to acquire the accumulated fund of knowledge and skills in the respective academic and professional programmes to which they are admitted.

Furthermore, students should master this knowledge so well that they can apply it when called upon to understand, master and manage the problems and situations they will face in future, both in their personal capacities and in their institutional or public responsibilities. There are no two ways about it.

Suffice it to say that CBE did not originate the thinking powers that policymakers want students to develop. Nor are these competencies peculiar to 21st-century demands.

Independent thinking, problem-solving and other capabilities policymakers around the world talk about have been among the fundamental purposes for which education was established in the first place.

Exceptional men in politics, science, business, religion and academia in earlier centuries possessed the powerful thinking and analytical abilities we now associate with university-educated and trained people.

A significant number of them did not even have university education. But they owed their development to the excellent foundations of education and schooling at the time.

Our universities must rise to the occasion and serve the country by giving students quality university education.

Some of the most transformative presidents of universities in the USA did not require external prodding to give their students the very best. They reformed university curricula whenever they found them wanting.

I have in mind the presidents of Harvard University, Charles William Eliot, Abbott Lawrence Lowell and James B. Conant; the President of the University of Chicago, Robert Hutchins; and the presidents of Princeton University, James McCosh and Woodrow Wilson.

These men brought leadership to bear on the universities society placed in their hands. They were transformative leaders.