The government’s reforms in higher institutions of learning, which are already in top gear, could be headed for success with senior officers evidently working in tandem while exuding confidence at ensuring successful implementation of the changes.
For the first time in many years, the senior officers have within the last few weeks shown vibrancy and deep technical and professional grasp as they interpret various policies.
Stakeholders have linked the enthusiasm by the officers to President Ruto’s hands-on style of tackling education issues, a major challenge to the officers to up their workmanship while hasting interpretation and implementation to keep pace with their boss.
Impressed by this, one of the retired but once hugely successful principals in Embu County summed up all that as “a resurrection of professional management of the education sector only witnessed in the late 1970s and 80s.”
Earlier, President Ruto appeared in media interviews where he clearly elaborated his government’s education reforms specifying the proposed allocations under the 2023/2024 budget as well as the newly restructured financing systems for universities.
The President went ahead to hold at least three meetings, lasting at least three hours each, with Vice Chancellors and his economic team where new systems to streamline funding to universities were sealed with increase of annual funds allocation from Ksh44 billion to Ksh82 billion.
The initial low funding had meant that the universities could not meet their financial obligations including paying lecturers, bills and statutory dues and that affected learning in the institutions.
Kenyans have come to learn new terms hitherto rarely mentioned such as the Means Testing Instrument (MTI), a system Ruto described as having worked for 25 years to determine university students qualifying for funding and those who did not.
He said that further increment of funding for TVET colleges from Ksh5.2 billion to Ksh10 billion annually meant that the mess the government found in schools, TVETs and universities had been sorted.
In addition, the marrying of the three key higher education agencies – HELB, Universities Fund (UF) and Kenya Universities and Collages Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) – and the decision to embrace Information Communication Technology (ICT) in all operations between the three entities shows the government’s determination to succeed and the need to ease transparency and accountability.
KUCCPS boss Anne Wahome challenged university authorities to be innovative and acquire funding from diverse sources given that in future, finances will target well-drawn budgets tied to student population and their scholarships and loan requirements.
Government funding of up to 80 per cent to universities, Ms. Wahome said, will mainly revolve around loans to strengthen a revolving fund hence the need for universities to initiate market-driven courses to help graduates earn and in turn help them clear the loans.
While tracing the dark financial times universities experienced courtesy of negligence by past regimes and weak finance management, the UF Chief Executive Mr. Monari reminded Kenyans that funding had stagnated at 48 per cent while enrolment increased leading to debts and compromised the quality of education.
The situation, the expert said, was headed towards lows of 21 per cent by 2028 had the government not launched current interventions.
With intention to support linkages with related bodies, the UF according to Mr. Monari had launched, “a Higher Education Information Management System to be used to trace students’ progress for data sharing”.
The government, Mr. Monari said, had also moved from burdening poor students with large loans because this would reduce them to a lifetime of struggling to repay the monies after completing their education.
Working under well-coordinated teamwork, the experts have confirmed expected financial stability in universities within the next five years.
But the UF boss has challenged university managements to realize the cash-cow they failed to milk had they commercialized internal executive programs. He asked them to create income generating projects through profitable utilization of the huge chunks of land they owned.
He advised that university authorities needed to launch negotiations with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to access tax waivers on some of its bills, but thriftily manage government allocated funds to clear non-remitted arrears and other retirement emolument funds.
Monari noted that huge amounts of money in scholarships and loans have in the past been irregularly allocated to university students, some who did not deserve such interventions with investigations revealing that up to 54 per cent of those enrolling in university were classified as less needy.
HELB on its part has announced campaigns to pursue the more than 120,000 loan defaulters within the next one month under an online digital system which will ensure defaulters’ data is confirmed for commencement of payment of arrears.
Newly founded unity in operations has seen issues quickly being brought into the government’s attention and this brings hope to the higher education fraternity that the current mess in the sector will be sorted soon once and for all.
By Robert Nyagah
The writer is an Education News reporter from Embu County
Get more stories from our website: Education News
You can also follow our social media pages on Twitter: Education News KE and Facebook: Education News Newspaper for timely updates.
