This archive report was first published on 11 September 2019.
On September 11, 2019, Scott Bellows wrote about the importance of academic freedom in higher education institutions in Kenya.
Academic freedom serves as the lubricant that enables the gears of higher education to work. However, a delicate force persists against the academy's psyche, with many Kenyans lambasting the quality of tertiary education institutions.
The term 'half-baked graduates' often trends on Twitter, with heaps of blame being put on universities while ignoring the anemic support and integration by industry, over-regulation by government, and low demand-induced expectations on the sector.
Commentators have proclaimed standardization as a way to enhance quality, requiring all courses to use the same textbooks, syllabi, methods, among others. However, more over-regulation will not solve the sector's ills, as it would spell disaster for Kenyan higher learning environment by teaching to the lowest common denominator and reduce learning outcomes for students and obliterate academic freedom.
Universities set programme learning outcomes for each academic programme or degree, and schools within the university are responsible for ensuring they empower their learners to meet and exceed those programme learning outcomes.
Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, pens that academic freedom provides faculty members with substantial latitude in deciding how to teach their courses.
Over in France, the Constitutional Council statute law declares that university professors, assistant professors, and researchers are fully independent and enjoy full freedom of speech in carrying out their respective research and teaching activities.
The Freedom Forum Institute classifies academic freedom into two categories: institutional and individual. Institutional academic freedom entails universities should be able to determine their educational mission free from any governmental intervention.
Ann Franke argues that academic freedom advances the two core values of higher education most effectively: advancing knowledge through research and creativity and educating students to develop their own independence of mind.
Nora Loreto expounds that a lecturer must have the academic freedom to design a course how they want, without undue interference from university administrators or other third parties.
