Layoffs seem imminent for employees in 74 universities and campuses after the Treasury on Thursday the 13th ofJune 2019, ordered a merger of the institutions.
In the budget, the Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich announced certain radical measures which will see some of the 32 public universities merge, some of their satellite campuses across the country shutdown as well as a review of the academic courses offered.
One consequence of these measures is that some members of staff will have to be let go.
The Treasury Secretary, Henry Rotich stated that, “We shall review all the university public financial and management systems, appraise ongoing projects with a view to restructuring them and implement radical measures that will include merger or closure of some universities and university campuses that are not able to sustain their operations against the number of students admitted or degree offered,”.
Public universities currently have 27,000 staff with 9,000 of them being lecturers.
Mr. Rotich also made it known that 97.7 billion Kenyan Shillings has been set aside to support university education.
The Treasury Secretary said, “The ministry is advising us but there is a funding challenge to the universities. Currently the funds are shared on the Differentiated Unit Cost but some of the universities end up getting seriously under-funded,” added Mr Rotich. “I won’t give specifics on dates, but the ministry with CUE will do a review on the degrees offered and the number of student admissions which is guiding the merger plans.”
He added that 12.6 billion Kenyan Shillings will go to the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB).
Several campuses across the country, have been shutdown since 2016, after cuts in student population due to lower entry grades cut student.
This adversely affected the once lucrative parallel degree programmes in which students paid fees based on market rates.
The universities have been the hardest hit by the sharp drop in the number of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education candidates scoring the C+ and above grade required for university entry. A development which further worsened its cash flow.
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics shows that university enrolment decreased to 426,965 last year (2018) from 452,494 in 2016, a decline of 25,529.
Some of the affected universities which have shutdown some of their campuses include the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA), Kisii University, Laikipia University, Moi University, Kenya Methodist University, the University of Baraton, South Eastern Kenya University (Nairobi), Kabarak University (Nairobi) and Co-operative University (Meru).
