Private universities risk closure, job cuts
The threat of job losses at private institutions Although it has surfaced, the new funding mechanism may result in the closure of some institutions.
This comes after the new funding model was adopted, which will help students through loans and scholarships starting in September of this year.
The scholarships, however, will only be available to students enrolling in their public institutions under the terms of the agreement, thus those attending private universities will not be entitled to apply.
As a result, students attending private colleges will only qualify for loans to pay for tuition.
The Kenya Association of Private Universities (KAPU) head, Prof. Stephen Mbugua, observed on Tuesday that some private institutions would be compelled to shut down as a result of the government’s decision to bar private universities from receiving government financing in the form of scholarships.
The vice chancellor of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), Prof. Mbugua, stated that the numbers of students are “so low that they are not sustainable to make our universities move to the next five years.”
At Catholic University of Eastern Africa, he spoke on the sidelines of the eighth Catholic Schools Principals’ Association Conference.
Prof. Mbugua also urged the government to rethink changing the funding paradigm in order to save the private institutions’ impending demise.
“We’ve already made a government appeal. In order to get this judgement changed, I’ve already written the Cabinet Secretary, the PS for Higher Education, and even the head of the education committee in parliament, he claimed.
Over 100,000 government-sponsored students have attended private institutions since 2016.
According to information provided by the Kenya Association of Private Universities to the National Assembly committee on education in 2021, private universities housed 15% of all government-sponsored students.
10,984 students were admitted by the colleges in 2016, 17,363 in 2017, 12,656 in 2018, 17,511 in 2019, and 27,756 in 2020. The universities welcomed 28,063 new students in 2021.
About 140,107 children who took the 2022 KCSE examinations this year were assigned to public and private universities to pursue undergraduate degrees.
Out of this, 13,485 students who were assigned to public institutions will receive scholarships and loans, while 9,662 students who were assigned to private universities would only receive student loans to help pay for their studies.
If the new paradigm remains the same, according to Prof. Mbugua, private universities will face severe financial difficulties.
He goes on to claim that because students were promised scholarships, there is a concerted push to promote admittance to public universities.
“This approach emerged from a wave of private universities. Many universities only had ten or less students, according to Mbugua.
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In order to support more jobs in the private and public sectors, he claimed that the model is in contrast to the Kenya Kwanza economic government economic model.
He claimed that although the government had pledged to increase employment, by keeping students out of the private sector, they were actually accomplishing the opposite.
Following an instruction from President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Education Ministry implemented the admission of government-sponsored students to private universities in 2016.
In 2014, a sessional document that sought to overhaul the financially challenged university sector initially suggested the admission of government-sponsored students to private universities.
The expansion of government student sponsorship to private colleges was named as one of the primary strategies to address difficulties facing higher education in Kenya in the Sessional Paper No. 14 of 2012.
But it wasn’t until President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the placement of government-sponsored students in all universities in 2016 that the programme actually got underway.
The President said that higher education funding from the public, corporate, and religious sectors should all be considered collectively in order to determine how to best use funding to train more Kenyans.
Private universities risk closure, job cuts
