Enrolment drop right for quality graduates

The cash crunch that has gripped the University of Nairobi and ushered in austerity offers lessons in how not to run a university.

The university is learning the hard way for being too reliant on the Treasury and fees from rising student population.

This strategy worked well as student numbers grew by double digits annually on the back of the lucrative parallel degree programme.

Cash flow and rising student numbers became a measure of success even as employers lamented poor quality of graduates. But the strategy came a cropper when strict admission criteria and exam marking lowered its student population by 30,348.

The UoN has been the hardest hit by the sharp drop in the number of KCSE candidates scoring the C+ and above grade required for admission, sharply reducing its cash flow.

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows university enrolment declined to 67,827 this year from 98,715 in 2015 — making it the first drop since the government started making public student numbers in the 1990s.

The falling numbers offer a silver lining to public universities as the lower enrolment boosts the lecturer-student ratio and eases pressure on teaching facilities.

This has the potential of helping to curb the release of half-baked graduates that employers have in recent years been complaining about.

We must bring to an end the quest for populating lecture halls for the sake of it. University leadership must think hard on diversifying revenue sources beyond fees and the Treasury allocations to include endowment funds.

Building endowments funds —from donations — provides a constant stream of cash to spend on academic and other programmes.

These funds are behind the growth of elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford that allow them to offer scholarships, get star professors and fund research.