UoN VC Prof. Kiama says fee changes will not affect already admitted students

The University of Nairobi (UoN) Vice Chancellor Prof. Stephen Kiama has said the recent fee increment will not apply to already admitted students but only to new ones seeking to join the institution henceforth.

Prof. Kiama, speaking on Citizen TV on Monday night, sought to defend the fee review saying it was approved a long time ago and the institution is just implementing it.

The UoN VC also rubbished reports that the fee increment was effected by 118 per cent, saying this figure was only a figment of imagination.

“There was no fee increment by 118 per cent, these are just calculations by people, I said that there is what we call differentiated unit costs which is there in the University Act 2012, it is agreed and it is aligned on 14 clusters. Each program falls under different fee cluster, and that was approved long time ago, it is not new,” he said.

“But the application of this fee, we said now progressively as the university continues to run, we charge it not for the students who are on session now, because those we have contracts with them, but if you join in the future you must pay the fee that is required. It does not apply whatsoever to any admitted student.”

Prof. Kiama spoke in response to the university students who had protested the move, giving the administration 48 hours to reverse it.

He also defended the move to slash the number of courses offered at the university from 579 to 324 saying some of them admitted very few to zero students despite being allocated resources.

According to the VC, some of the programs were also similar in their coursework hence creating duplication of resources.

“There are two different reasons why we removed the programmes. One of the things I said is the throughput. The number of students you are graduating and when you look, you are incurring more costs that what we are collecting. Others have not admitted students for some time,” he said.

“You find the difference between one programme and another is very little. You need to ensure that when you have a programme, it profiles one student from another distinctly.”

The radical changes at the University of Nairobi will also see five offices of the deputy vice chancellors abolished and replaced with 2 positions of associate vice chancellor.

These scrapped positions include DVC Finance and Planning, DVC Human Resource, DVC Student Affairs, DVC Academic Affairs and DCV Research and Innovation.

Eight positions of principals and deputy principals for the six University of Nairobi colleges have equally been abolished.