New varsity funding model pushes students to cheaper courses at the expense of “ability”

While I agree that we needed to change to the new University Funding Model, we must be prepared to deal with some of the new realities coming up with its implementation.

I recently noticed something strange when students selected their preferred programmes. Almost three months ago, when KCSE students with C+ and above were selecting their university degree programmes, I visited one of my village town cyber; I noticed something suspicious in the conversation between a mother and his son.

A mother in my village was forcing her son to choose an "arts" programme instead of a medicine, pharmacy, or engineering course despite him having a straight A in his KCSE.

As a university don, I joined their conversation, and the mother told me that the fees charged to those "first class degree" programmes were too high for the family and son was to do "affordable" courses offered at the university.

The son was mad, saying he worked so hard to pursue medicine at the university. On the other hand, the mother insisted that the family could not afford it.

I got confused and was eager to do a summary analysis of whether students would choose "cost-friendly programmes" instead of "merited programs" they qualified for at the universities. 

First forward last week, when our university received the students, I did my analysis, and true to my worry, our science and technology schools received fewer students than other arts and social sciences schools.

Our School Dean told us that he did not know the problem with such a massive decline in the number of students compared to other schools that have received a 100% increase. I knew we had a huge problem to deal with. 

What are the Future problems to deal with? 

Article 53 (1) (b) of the constitution gives our children the right to affordable and accessible education. What must we be prepared for? First, I see problems in the implementation of the CBC curriculum.

The CBC requires that 60 % of the students need STEM-based courses, 15% in social science, and 15% in arts and sports. How will we achieve this CBC dream with the new model in place? Is this a miss? Did the new funding model fail us? These are some of the questions I keep asking myself.

If we continue with the problem, more students qualified in medicine, engineering, pharmacy, actuarial science, and many other very technical issues will choose to do less expensive courses simply because their family cannot afford their dream career paths. We might end up killing careers in medicine, engineering, and other highly technical studies at the expense of arts-based programmes.

The cost issues, the most critical factor in this new University funding model, led to only 9000 students choosing private universities compared to 130,000 who selected public universities.

Have we finally killed private universities? Were students only using cost to choose universities instead of merit? I also ask myself.

What policy reforms do we need?

While the government claims that Means Testing Instrument (MTI) will solve the problem, poor implementation will see most students who have scored As and qualified for first-degree courses opt for other affordable options.

When students apply for loans, they still need to find out where they have been classified into any of the four; vulnerable, extremely needy, needy, and less needy. As a result, many are worried and are now opening WhatsApp groups to “crowdfund” their children's university education. 

The government must address how to address the falsification of information by the less needy students to be vulnerable or omission by the vulnerable students.

Universities today need to learn how to deal with the sudden increase in arts and social sciences students. A university of science and technology is now boosting "80% arts-based students" inhabited. Is this a problem? If we do not act now, we might kill the initial vision of many Kenyan universities that are the center of "science and technology," necessary to realising the vision of 2030. 

In conclusion, developing policies to address some of these issues that are seeking to delink the placement of students and funding of students will promote equality, efficiency, and transparency in higher education funding compared to the old university funding model.   

Writer is a Lecturer at Meru University of Science and Technology (MUST) and Post-Doc Researcher at Umeå University, Sweden.

Email: joabodhiambo2030@gmail.com

Twitter: @Dr_Jodhiambo