I recently wanted to construct a simple structure and approached a few artisans. As the first one spoke, I could tell he was incompetent. The second one looked at the sketch then told me, “I can’t read these ‘engineer’ designs you are giving me”. Finally, it took a graduate of a village polytechnic to help me and he did a fantastic job. This was revealing and worrying.
I remember calling my friend Fred Machokaa recently to find out why he had been ranting angry on one of his ‘Roga Roga’ radio programmes about government systematically taking over most middle level colleges. “I frankly cannot understand why government cannot build new institutions instead of converting technical training colleges to affiliate campuses. Now Kebabii is gone”, he lamented.
Fred was right. Too many middle level training colleges have been converted into affiliate colleges of our mainstream universities. Sadly, over the years, support to Village Youth Polytechnics countrywide has progressively diminished.
The government has within the last two decades aggressively promoted the growth of higher level education through the establishment of public and private universities.
Kenya now has numerous local and international universities. Most are to be found in Nairobi, Nakuru, Baringo, Narok, Laikipia and Eldoret. There are universities in Kakamega, Maseno, Kisumu and Kisii as well. Universities have been established in Limuru, Juja, Thika, Nyeri, Embu, Chuka and Meru too. Kitui, Rongai, Voi and Mombasa host others.
But issues of quality and appropriate accommodation in the nascent and expanding institutions will need more attention. With good regional marketing, the institutions provide us a good opportunity for more foreign exchange and regional integration through student interaction.
But since every university graduate at work must be supported by a number of lower level graduates for effective production, we must now refocus on village polytechnics and middle level technical training colleges. The guy who fixed my structure was for instance a primary school drop out. But he honed skills through basic training at a village polytechnic and thereafter gained experience as an apprentice under construction foremen. He is good and today oversees any simple construction with ease. This level of skill is required countrywide .
Many of those we call engineers overseeing the construction of our houses, factories and roads are actually graduates from polytechnics like Nakuru, Eldoret, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kirinyaga or Machakos. Other training outfits like Kenya Science, Mbagathi and KTTC provided us with Science and technical teachers or instructors for these institutions.
But in our zeal to promote higher learning, we have converted many of them into universities. Yet all this at a time when primary and secondary enrollment is at an all time high. Sadly, the cross-over rates to secondary and university have been low and many have had to drop out after primary or secondary school level.
Such people are a useful resource to this country if turned around through technical training.
Mr Mwathane is a consultant in surveying and land information management [email protected]
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