Following the open letter written by a student from the University of Nairobi (UoN) lamenting about the sorry state of the university, we wish to appeal to students to send us information on mismanagement, corruption and failing infrastructure at Kenyan universities.
Vice Chancellors in Kenya are a unique lot as they only concentrate in building expensive good-for-nothing buildings such as the Tower at Uon and the so-called ultra-modern library at Kenyatta University (KU) instead of investing in research.
In 2018, a study by CPS Research International revealed the shocking state of research in Kenyan universities, with 35 per cent of the institutions not prepared to conduct research.
Universities are supposed to be one of the institutions spearheading change in a nation through activism and research that positively affects government policy, social order
Universities in Kenya are often said to be the best in the region, producing the best workers who hold plum positions in the region.
However, over the years, university education in Kenya has been reduced to a scam, where third-rated lecturers are endorsed by university senate to teach causes they have no mastery in.
Some colleges that have received the university charter do not even fit to be primary schools.
Cases in point are some contraption of universities littering the rural areas and some semi-urban places in Kenya.
University education has truly deteriorated to a sorry state. Kuitwa Principle au dean aina maaana kama hamuwezani kuProvide infrastructure poa kwa mastude, nani. Is there a sinister motive? Education in the hands of the oppressor serves not to awaken but to make students and in turn the populace become unthinking zombies.
There has been a lot of small reforms in the Kenyan education sector.
The introduction of the parallel degree programmes necessitated by universities ned for more funding; or opening the space for the ‘dunderhead’ children of the elite.
The government also cut funding to universities.
In this era of the unofficial monarchy in Kenya, the Kenyatta monarchy, it is well to assume that their ultimate goal is total subjugation of the masses.
From introduction of the half-baked Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) to clamp-down of university students inside the hallowed grounds of the institutions, to outright budget cuts to university.
These are the hallmarks of a system hell-bent at producing people who cannot think.
As the great educator Paulo Freire says in his revolutionary book, Pedagogy of the oppressed, “…what the elites of today want, although they do not denounce popular education so cynically and openly, was for the people not to think…an oppressor class, cannot think with the people, neither can they let the people think for themselves.”
Send us the requested information and let’s see changes in institutions of higher learning or total revolution.
Send us information on mismanagement, failing infrastructure, sex abuse, student abuse, lecturer abuse. You can accompany your information with pictures.
Use the email and WhatsApp number shared at the end of this article.