Quality of education in varsities on the decline

Where there is smoke, there is fire. Employers in Kenya have in the recent past raised the red flag over Kenyan private and public universities breeding incompetent graduates.

Many graduates have lost jobs, with their employers complaining of them not being able to deliver in the roles they have been assigned in the companies. But who is to blame for all this?

As I was going through the Daily Nation newspaper on 4^th February 2014, I was greeted by some shocking investigative story on how students who fail in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations get admission in some private universities to pursue degree courses, contrary to the law. The story revealed that students who score as low as D (Plain) in KCSE get admitted to study degree courses in private universities.

This is a clear indication that the universities are just after making money from students who do not qualify to join public universities through the Joint Admissions Board. With the rapid mushrooming of many “2^nd floor colleges” some which claim to be offering quality training to students, one can’t help but wonder where the education sector is headed to.

Methinks employers’ complaints in the recent past of half-baked graduates who can’t carry out their duties efficiently at work can be attributed to these alarming reports.

One of the factors that are also contributing to our varsities producing incompetent graduates is universities lacking adequate facilities to equip learners with hands on skills needed in the job market. With the introduction of double intake in public universities, the few permanent lecturers are overworked, forcing the institutions of higher learning to hire other unqualified staff to “pass knowledge to students”, in the process contributing to decline of quality of education in these centers.

Last year saw at least four middle level colleges being elevated to become fully fledged public universities, some of which do not have the capacity to train and produce graduates that can compete in the job market. These newly promoted universities depend largely on lectures that have minimal experience in lecturing, since they have very few lecturers who have been in the field for a longer time.

The other reason why I think the quality of education in our universities is crumbling is the fact that nowadays many most students do not even attend 70% of their lectures in an academic semester but only show up to do end of semester exams. This is courting laziness in universities. Is the 8-4-4 education curriculum in Kenya just exam oriented? Is the curriculum focused on seeing that students are able to actually practice what they are taught at school once they get employed?

To curb these problems facing higher education in Kenya, strict measures should be put in place to streamline students’ admission to both public and private universities and to ensure that only students who qualify for admission to study degree courses are enrolled.

The Ministry Of Education and all the stakeholders in the education sector should ensure that all public and private universities meet the required standards to offer training in the various courses they offer. If all these are measures are put in place I think the current situation will be arrested.