Moi university administration block. CS John Mbadi has said government is currently unbale to fund university education. Photo: Education News.
Appearing before National Assembly Education Committee chaired by MP Julius Melly, National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi said that the government is unable to fund university education.
He announced planned rescue measures including laying off staffs, sale of satellite campuses and the disputed new funding model that will see thousands of students from poor backgrounds locked out of the education loan.
The move leaving the future of higher education in the country in uncertainty, after admission by the government that it is broke, leaving universities in limbo midst growing debt.
For years, universities have been underfunded, salaries unpaid, ballooning debt, and large number of students have thrown the once prestigious and glorified universities into shackles.
In rescue of a dwindling future, the government has announced plans to resolve the challenge, including lay offs putting university staffs across the country jobs hanging by a a thread.
“The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with universities, is expected to develop a comprehensive reform strategy that will ensure financial sustainability within public universities. One is to restructure public universities to reduce unnecessary administrative costs and measures of staff right-sizing and outsourcing of non-core services, and rationalising satellite campuses to dispose such assets to offset pending financial obligations among others,” Mbadi said.
Mbadi also told the Committee that the government cannot and will not continue to fund current university education since it is broke.
“For a long time, we have been living a lie in the sense that we give our children to the universities to educate for free without funding. We have to be realistic and ask ourselves, do we continue living that lie or we can do differently,” Mbadi remarked.
He also disclosed that the government owes some universities KSh 4 billion, which he said might not be paid, as it was used to facilitate free education since 2016, further confirming that the government is pushing forward with the new embattled funding model, which leaves the burden to parents.
“This new model that was being resisted so furiously needs to be supported to succeed. Call the administrators of universities, they will tell you that this new model is helping them come out of financial distress. That is the only way. Let us not cheat ourselves as a country that we can finance fully and make university education free,” he said.
Education stakeholders have blamed the looming crisis in higher education to political interference and neglect reasons that plunged public universities into sleeping giants, and further dimming the hope for a bright future for students from vulnerable families in the country.
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