Prepare for new curriculum, universities told

The Education ministry has asked public universities to diversify their income sources and prepare to roll-out the competence based curriculum.

University Education PS Simon Nabukwesi urged chairpersons of university councils, vice-chancellors and principals to diversify their incomes and hire private firms to collect debt.

“The debt accumulation is high yet universities are supposed to do their core function which is academic and empowering students. When they spend a lot of time overstretching themselves, to get out of the institutions to collect debts and going to court to deal with litigations related to pending bills then we lose the core function of a university,” said the PS. He said the government will endeavour to increase research funding.

“We wish to empower those with the capacity and interest in research by recognising and supporting them with funding so that they get into innovations and support us in finding solutions to challenges confronting us.

"However, we don’t do so much of that due to limited staffing in our institutions and low funding,”  said the PS, who was speaking during the first international annual conference at Sarova Whitesands in Mombasa.

The PS said universities must enhance revenue collection by developing and implementing a policy on raising resources from other avenues including competitive research, entrepreneurship grants, alumni associations, continuous education, community service and business investments.

The Commission for University Education chairman, Prof Chacha Nyaigotti-Chacha, said the institutions of higher learning are preparing for CBC, noting it will benefit learners and students. 

“We are not changing the content of what people cover, we are looking at how people learn. CBC as conceived, has wonderful advantages in terms of the methodologies that will be applied by the people that will be guiding students and learners. Let us not overblow a problem where there’s none,” said Prof Chacha.

He added Kenya has enough competent people and capacity to look at any curriculum. Prof Chacha said Kenya has highly trained curriculum developers who will review CBC and align it.