CUE Wants Tutors Teaching Rejected Courses Sacked, Funding Scrapped
The regulator of universities has urged the government not to finance degree programs that have failed to attract enough students.
Chacha Nyaigoti, the chairman of the Commission for Universities (CUE), stated that instructors of such courses must now seek employment elsewhere.
Prof. Chacha stated that numerous degree programs lack student interest, making it impractical to allocate resources to them.
He highlighted the cost factor associated with teaching a limited number of students, emphasizing that each course entails multiple units taught by highly paid, qualified staff members at the university.
He was responding to an exposé by The Standard about courses that attracted few students in the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) 2022 KCSE placement.
The shocking details disclosed that only one student enrolled in each of the 18 degree programs. Each of the remaining 104 academic programs attracted no more than 10 students.
Food Security, Horticulture, Soil Science, Forestry, Dryland Agriculture, Biological Sciences, Geophysics and Mineralogy, Aquaculture and Fisheries Technology, and Environmental Chemistry were among the Bachelor of Science courses offered.
Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, Bachelor of Science Networks and Communication Systems, Bachelor of Industrial Technology, Water Resource and Environmental Management, Environmental Resource Management, Library and Knowledge Management, and Bachelor of Arts Chaplaincy are additional courses in which only one student placed nationally.
Chacha says that certain academic programs qualify as mere course units. The character of the institution, market forces, the availability of resources, the supervision of professional organizations, and the availability of adequate space, facilities, and faculty all play a significant role in determining the nature of the programs offered at various universities.
The fact that nearly 200 courses had fewer than 10 students is a wake-up call for all stakeholders in the higher education sector, according to Chacha.
Prof. Chacha emphasized the need for collective awareness and reconsideration of the structure of degree programs within educational institutions. He highlighted that this advice had been consistently communicated to universities and is now manifesting as a reality.
The professor inquired about the methodology of providing a biblical studies degree. He considered it a subsidiary subject that could be incorporated as a course unit within the realm of theology.
Additionally, he sought clarification on the subjects covered by degrees like the Bachelor of Sociology and Technology and the Bachelor of Agriculture with IT.
Chacha stated that some of these are too narrow and could be taught as course units within a larger academic curriculum. He stated that it would be costly to teach these courses, which attracted fewer than ten students, because each would require a large number of compensated instructors.
Last week in Naivasha, during a media sensitization workshop on the new funding model, KUCCPS Chief Executive Mercy Wahome questioned the rationale behind certain university courses that had an excess of faculty but a deficiency of students.
Dr. Wahome suggested that the new funding formula could force universities to reevaluate the cost-effectiveness of such programs. Chacha stated that the universities may have been well-intentioned when they designed their academic programs, but that they must return to the drafting board.
He said certain courses possess such limited scope that when students seek international employment opportunities, a substantial amount of effort is required to elaborate on the comprehensiveness of their degree programs.
As a result of the new funding formula, it has become apparent that private universities may lose one sixth of their employees.
CUE Wants Tutors Teaching Rejected Courses Sacked, Funding Scrapped
