Private varsities to admit State-sponsored students

Kenya’s private universities are eyeing a fresh income stream as the government seeks their services to help ease an admissions crisis in public institutions.

Higher Education minister William Ruto on Monday said the ministry had opened talks with private universities to have them admit at least 20,000 students who qualify to join public universities annually, but miss out for lack of capacity.

The deal, which will see the government pay private universities for additional students admitted, is expected to break new grounds in the way Kenya’s institutions of higher learning will handle rising demand for university education in the next decade.

Mr Ruto held discussions with vice chancellors and council chairmen of Kenya’s 23 private universities to hammer out a deal that could help ease the admissions crisis in public universities and significantly increase the university student population.

Vice chancellors, who attended the meeting, said the plan was agreed upon and that a team of ministry officials and representatives of the private universities had been assigned the task of drafting the framework for its execution.

The arrangement, if successful, should aid the planned intake of at least 40,000 extra students to clear a backlog caused by long university closures that has in the past required public universities to double their intakes every year.

Public universities last doubled their admissions in 1985 as the government moved to clear a backlog caused by long closures after the 1982 attempted coup.

The move has since been blamed for the strain on physical and academic resources in public universities and their near conversion into enterprise centres that channel more of their resources towards parallel rather than regular programmes.

“There is a lot of idle capacity in private universities,” Mr Ruto said. “We are discussing the possibility of using these facilities to fix the admissions crisis in public universities,” he said.

Under the arrangement, the government will pay private universities the same amount of money it spends on each student in a public university.

“We know that this is a very touchy issue because private universities want to keep positions to themselves, but we think that there is additional capacity in our private universities,” the minister said.

Revenue stream

The plan is being seen as capable of raising the annual admissions capacity of Kenyan universities to more than 80,000 creating space for the more than 40,000 students who qualify for university education each year but are locked out for lack of capacity.

This year alone, only 24,000 students out of 82,000 who qualified will join public universities under government sponsorship.

The rest will have to fight out for places in private or join public universities as self sponsored students who bear a much higher cost burden.

Growing demand for higher education has continued to pile pressure on institutions to look for additional admission spaces, forcing the government to re-think its strategies.

Demand for university education and the subsequent need for expansion is being fuelled by thousands of working Kenyans, seeking additional qualifications to remain relevant in a changing labour market.

Private university administrators see the plan as opening a new revenue stream even as it expands access to higher education.

“The agreement is that universities and the government will come up with a unit cost that will help determine how much money the government will pay private universities for every student admitted,” said Prof Henry Thairu, the vice chancellor at Inoorero University.

“The understanding is that participation in this plan is optional. It will be an advantage to universities with a lot of space but no students,” said Prof Thairu.

Currently, regular programme students studying Arts pay a subsidised tuition fee of at least Sh50,000 per year against a unit cost of Sh120,000 with the government making up the difference.

Private university students pay much more for similar courses posing a harmonisation challenge.

At a rate of Sh50,000 per student paid to private universities, the institutions will tap at least Sh1 billion in new revenues for admitting 20,000 students annually.

Failure to push through new financing and admission solutions would plunge the sub-sector deeper into an admission crisis that will continue to deny thousands of qualified candidates a chance to pursue higher education.

To effectively roll out such a plan, private universities have asked the government for concessions to improve the operating environment as well as to help them access finance for expansion.

“Among the things that would help ease operational challenges for private universities are cheap loans for construction, eliminating work permit fees for international faculties and making donations to universities tax deductible,” said Prof Freida Brown, the vice chancellor at the United States International University (USIU).

Increasing access

Such initiatives, she said, have the potential of lowering the cost of education and increasing access to universities.

University administrators said expansion of facilities tops the agenda of most colleges lending urgency to the search for new financing sources in the marketplace.

“Use of private universities to admit more students is workable. What we need are strict checks to ensure quality is not eroded in the private universities as extra students join in,” said Prof Raphael Munavu, former Vice Chancellor of Moi University.

“Private universities need to be modelled on specific areas of interest such as Law, Agriculture, ICT to effectively produce highly qualified graduates,” said Prof Munavu.

Increasing access to higher education has emerged as one of the biggest policy challenges for Kenya, a problem that has worsened a biting admission crisis in the wake of faltering quality of learning.

Public universities have been particularly strained by the decline of government disbursements to the institutions forcing most to stop development of new facilities on the campuses.

The success of Kenya’s higher education is bound to be measured by the ability of the institutions to absorb all qualified candidates, irrespective of whether or not they meet the country’s human capital demand.

This will be taken as the return on investment from the billions of shillings being pumped into the universities by the government, parents, and guardians annually.

Admitting government-sponsored students in private universities is expected to increase the government’s interest in the management of the institutions that have for years had a free-hand in the running of their affairs.

Inability of the seven public universities to enrol all qualified students –– those with a grade of C+ and above in KCSE –– has provided a large pool of students to private universities that also contribute a significant fraction of their revenues.

Private universities have always been seen as a preserve for the rich households owing to the high fees charged compared to public universities under the government financed programme.

A nursing student at The University of Eastern Africa, Baraton for example, pays Sh76, 860 in tuition fees per semester compared to Sh8,000 for a government sponsored student taking the same course at the University of Nairobi.

The proposed partnership is however raising fears that private universities could lose their exclusive status and lead to a large movement of students to foreign universities.

Most expensive

Failure to adequately finance extra students could, for example, trigger a wave of university fee increments as institutions seek extra money to support larger student populations and adjust to the reality of diminishing government subsidies.

A fresh rise in university fees has the potential of making Kenya’s university education the most expensive in the region, posing the danger of mass flight of capital as parents seek affordable options in places such as South Africa.

Kenyan universities bear the dubious distinction of being the most expensive in East Africa, a development that is being blamed on the financing model.

Public universities for example have traditionally been financed largely through government allocations.