How Universities Will be Merged Under New Reforms
To further address the need to improve performance in research and innovation, the taskforce emphasized the importance of forming university alliances and merging universities based on their areas of specialization.
In practice, this will mean that universities that perform poorly will merge with universities that perform well in order to enhance their capacities and perform as one.
However, the proposition may be difficult to sell, given that the majority of universities will prefer to operate independently.
In 2029, the first cohort of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), which entered primary school in 2023, is anticipated to enroll in universities.
According to the report of the Presidential Working Group on Education Reforms, upon full implementation of CBC, sixty percent of students will enroll in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses, twenty-five percent in humanities, and fifteen percent in creative studies.
Universities are expected to prepare sufficiently for this transition. The taskforce wants the Commission for University Education (CUE) to lead the development of the University Competency-Based Curriculum Framework (UCBCF), universities to retool all academic staff in order to implement the Competency-Based Curriculum education system, and to align their Bachelor of Education degree programme with the CBC by the beginning of the 2023/2024 academic year.
The Commission for University Education reports that Kenya currently has 78 universities and university colleges, 42 of which are public and 36 of which are private.
Despite the expansion of university education, few universities in Kenya rank among the top 100 in Africa, and even fewer among the top 20, according to the taskforce’s report.
Numerous universities in Kenya fall short of their potential, which undermines the country’s international performance in research and scientific advancement.
The taskforce attributes universities‘ poor performance to obstacles such as inadequate governance structures, limited research and innovation productivity, and inadequate funding.
How Universities Will be Merged Under New Reforms