How to fix public university problems

Most public universities are in financial distress and unable to meet their financial obligations. They are characterised by unpaid part-time salaries, suppliers, salary delays, and unremitted statutory deductions.

Some institutions have been unable to fully implement the 2017/2021 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), resulting in staff picketing and strikes that disrupt the university calendar. With reduced government funding, the situation can only worsen for universities whose top-level managers choose to live in their comfort zones and rule from ivory towers.

Some universities are technically insolvent and must be urgently fixed to save them from utter collapse. What then must we do to cure what ails our universities? I believe both the universities and the government must play their part in cleaning up the mess and saving our higher learning institutions from their unfortunate predicament.

The first thing that must be done is to ensure that the leadership across the board is visionary and transformational. Leadership determines how far an institution goes, for as the saying goes, everything falls and rises on leadership.

Universities must be led by leaders who are clear in their mind how the future of the university they lead should look like. The university management must inspire and mobilise all the workers to achieve their vision for the university. The university leadership must see the bigger picture and work towards achieving future goals.

A visionless leader will lead employees and the university to a drift. The university leadership should be fixed during recruitment. The government must appoint forward-looking management and be able to steer the universities to higher levels. Leadership and managerial skills, competence, and ability to source funds should be key considerations for appointing top-level managers and council members.

Professors who head universities must have leadership and management skills to succeed. The council members also need to be well-worked persons to source funding for the universities. However, political inclinations must never be a consideration for appointment.

Additionally, top-level managements with integrity to weed out wastage, nepotism and corruption. This will ensure that employees are placed where they optimise their skills. It will also ensure recruitment is done only when necessary, reducing the crazy teaching vs non-teaching ratios and ballooning wage bill.

In the absence of systems with integrity, universities may become employment bureaus for extreme positions to appease the appointing authorities. Systems with integrity will ensure the monies generated in the university is not mismanaged or misappropriated. Raising tuition fees, reducing part-time payments, teaching staff, and teaching more units will not fix a broken system.

Thirdly, universities must engage in more offensive strategies and stop quick fixes. They need to engage in innovative ways of generating funds. Whereas research and grants are one obvious way of generating funds, universities must diversify and integrate.

They need to start engaging in related or unrelated diversification and forward or backward integration. For example, what prevents a university from operating a bakery and supplying bread to students and the community around it? Why not keep dairy cows and supply milk to the university kitchen?

Universities need to explore ideas that are innovative and chart new territories. They must begin to target new customers such as corporates to sponsor employees for seminars and short courses.

The innovation output from students and research can be commercialised to generate funds. Leadership should be at the forefront in developing income and optimising revenue (popularly known as cutting costs) and be seen to be doing so.

It is imperative that the government gives full attention to public university education and fully fund the institutions to have the requisite infrastructure and the capacity to absorb virtually all students who qualify for public education. Indirect funding of private universities to admit government-sponsored students denies public universities the much-needed income.

The government should ensure that all public universities are better equipped than private ones to enable them to attract self-sponsored students. The quick fixes of placing students in private universities is not the solution. The fact that some private universities have been allocated more students than some public universities is an indicator of a broken public system that the government must fix.

The writer is a senior lecturer, Multimedia University of Kenya.

Strategy, Governance and Management Consultant.

Email:[email protected].