It is nearly a decade since the Kenyan government adopted a new model of higher education funding emphasizing technical and vocational training over university education. The model has resulted in both casualties and beneficiaries.
The philosophy behind this popular and not-so novel approach was the supposition that universities were theoretical in their training as opposed to the government’s desired practical orientation. As such, the ‘theoretical’ focus left most graduates without appropriate industry skills.
With the change of model, universities experienced reduction in their funding by 20 per cent, as technical and vocational colleges (TVCs) became the main gainers.
What is more, campaigns were waged by government education functionaries to the effect that the ‘practical’ technical and vocational training was suited to the current job market. They implied without evidence that TVC graduates were more creative and innovative, job creators and employable than university graduates.
Before we take such claims as truth, it’s important to interrogate intentions of such constructions. As at today, there are 238 compared to 52 technical training institutions when Jubilee government came to power. There is no doubt that TVETs have capacity to generate innovative products and arts.
But a trip to a number of national polytechnics, technical and vocational institutes, you’re greeted with gigantic metallic gates, smilingly well-laid cabros, sparkling ceramic flower vases, shiny coats of paintings overlaying college buildings, and grand leather sofas in various offices.
Rather than discrete, confrontational relationship between university technical training, there is need to create systems of synergising their paths of knowledge and technology production. Incubation centres integrating public and private agencies/interests should be nurtured to help produce thinkers.
The quality of new knowledge generated by universities can be used by technical institutions to improve their creations. Universities, too, can refine TVET innovations by adding to their value and focus to make them globally competitive.
Secondly, there is need to identify and make sustainable follow-up to innovations. The process of creating is always a painstaking one; it requires deep thinking, and many hours of loneliness. This means that individuals committed to generating new products, objects, technologies and knowledge to get us these innovations.
That means that we should be more bothered about those raw talents that go to waste in rural areas.
Therefore, both public and private agencies should establish structures to expose innovators, and above all link them up with other institutions that can harness their productivities. No institution is self-sufficient to provide complete support to all innovations.
Thirdly, we must encourage local inter-college trainee exchanges whereby highly creative trainees visit local universities and vice versa to learn new forms of innovations. As it is, when we talk about students exchange programme, then it must only involve countries.
However, it is through local exchange programmes that trainees can learn how to restructure and even domesticate their unique innovations; they can also understand the way their innovations and knowledges influence their local contexts as they work towards crafting their applicability to the global context.
After all, a technology will ultimately find its way to the international arena once its demand becomes its irresistible.
Kennedy Opande, anthropologist working with Nation Media Group
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