Our universities now care more about earning than learning

Last week, education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi warned universities against “needless” expansion. It was the second time Mr Kaimenyi was issuing the warning, saying that expansion might compromise the quality of services.

Sadly, the warnings are coming too late. Kenyan public universities are expanding at a furious rate. Both public and private universities are now driven by the instinct to maximize profits – education be damned.

Our universities might be public, but their aims are unashamedly private.

The first, and most obvious sign, that there is no difference between public universities and companies came last year during the university workers’ strike.

The fight was unnecessarily bitter.

Money for salaries was released by the government, but the universities didn’t pass it on. There were a lot of underhand dealings, with the management trying to cleave the unions into teaching and non-teaching staff by promising different pay-outs. The vice-chancellors ended up on one side, the staff on the other.

It was surprising because universities are meant to be run as some sort of beatific self-help clubs that pursue education.

It isn’t a stretch to think that soon, the cleaning and catering services will be outsourced, just like security, so that you have silent automatons who will not complain of official mistreatment.

Then there is the increasing valorisation of the public university vice-chancellor, who has been reborn as a corporate titan.

VC NOW FACE OF THE BRAND

On one university’s websites, the vice-chancellor is in six of the eight pictures on the slideshows. One office of a university administrator I visited had two copies of the same calendar with pictures of the vice-chancellor. The VC’s photo appears on every month.

Go to the JKUAT, UoN or KU website and on the landing page, you will find a photo of the VC. Why doesn’t that happen in private universities like Strathmore or USIU and their websites?

I have been to the Strathmore University VC’s office and the place is surprisingly spartan. No red carpet, no portrait of the VC looking imperious, no secretary outside whose job is to prevent people from coming in, and no antechamber for those waiting to see the big man.

I didn’t even see a photo of the VC shaking the hand of the great and good, or a mahogany desk that looks like it would be more at home in the office of a West African dictator. Such levels of modesty are probably illegal in a public university.

As management language becomes increasingly prevalent in public universities, the VC has become the face of the brand, a sort of celebrity with an entourage.

Why do the advertisements for VCs stress professorial pedigree when, clearly, they need someone to do a bit of glad-handing and pose for cameras unveiling this and that? In fact, I bet you several former VCs will run for public office.

There is also the increased use of signature architecture. All public universities want to straddle the skies with some statement-making building. One public university has a post-modern library.

It aggressively declares this fact in brochures and websites. Visit the website of one library and you will first see the building’s architecture, then its state-of-the-artness, followed by its commodiousness, and finally capped with the books.

Can you have a library without books, or are they a sideshow to the architecture? We will get towers, amphitheatres, futuristic libraries before we get down to such dull things as hostels.

In addition, universities are buying up swathes of land and buildings in the city. They put up huge structures and buy buildings in the CBD announcing their arrival. They buy the buildings at scandalous prices with the aim of churning out as many graduates as possible.

In the spirit of openness, cubicles, free work flow, blue-sky and green-fields thinking, one public university has its planned procurement online. You quickly notice that bricks, mortar and land purchases dominate the balance sheet.

The university spends five times more on advertising than on staff development (the newspaper industry thanks your donships for your munificence); three times more on building an executive lift than it does on mentorship; more on fuel than on the library and book purchases; a fifth on staff journals of what it spends on staff uniforms; and a small fortune on photocopying.

I am not sure what to make of a university that spends more on outside professionals than on its own staff. But it can’t be good, considering that it is meant to be a repository of expertise.

Interestingly, most companies have done away with executive lifts and only government institutions hold on to these barnacles of elitism. A university is meant to foster equality in society through education, yet no one sees the irony of having a lift for the bosses.

EXPENSIVE INSTITUTIONS

In private universities, the problem is that teaching has been brought closer to the business orbit. Whole labs, theatres and wings bear corporate sponsorship. This kind of relationship is slowly making its way to public universities.

Meanwhile, staff are underpaid as universities expand. Many lecturers shuttle across the city to their second teaching job at marginalised-county university city campuses after finishing their lecture in public universities.

Universities are also very expensive. Already, it costs half the median office worker’s annual wages for the cheapest parallel courses, going by KNBS figures. University education is out of reach for the median-income earner who has no hope of paying for a year of tuition at, say the University of Nairobi, even if he saved all his earnings.

Helb doesn’t help much. It is important to note that though Helb interest rates are below that of inflation — it is actually free money — the penalties for defaulting are punitive. Students who default on their loans can end up with huge debts.

Public universities seem to engage more in brand building than educational pursuits. Despite being publicly funded, they operate like commercial concerns, where profit maximisation is key. They are run like companies, with the VCs serving as CEOs.

In such a situation, advertising budgets bloom while research budgets dwindle. Part of the problem is, of course, the fact that the government has cut funding to universities, which means the institutions have to make more money themselves.

To fund these new, real estate acquisitions, the cost of public university education will increase, making it a preserve of the rich.
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