Kenyan varsities ordered to review courses
Universities will now be required to review degree courses every four years to ensure the curriculum is in line with emerging trends and job market requirements.
According to new guidelines developed by the Commission for Higher Education (CHE), part of the reviewers team will be drawn from the related industry.
A member must be a holder of a Masters degree with managerial position for more than five years in that field.
The move is, however, bound to raise a storm in the higher education sector as the commission has exempted public universities from these new requirements, a section of which urgently needs the review.
Prof Florence Lenga, deputy commission secretary in charge of accreditation and quality assurance, said: “These guidelines have been approved for full implementation.”
She has, therefore, called a meeting on Monday next week to be attended only by chartered universities in Kenya.
They include Baraton University, Catholic University, Daystar, United States International University (USIU), Methodist University, St Paul’s University and Pan Africa Christian University.
Others are Strathmore, Mt Kenya, Kabarak, Africa International and Kenya Highlands Evangelical and Africa Nazarene University.
“The purpose of this meeting is to create awareness to the universities on the approved process before its implementation,” she said in her invitation letter.
Prof Lenga noted that public universities were created under Acts of Parliament and this empowered them to make decisions on their own academic programmes.
This comes at a time when professional bodies in engineering and law have discredited degrees being offered by the public universities, casting doubts on quality of general education at the institutions.
Parallel degree programmes were also said to have watered down standards at public universities, creating a further need for an external regulator.
Professional bodies say degree courses at the public universities have low quality curriculum. The institutions are said to lack qualified lecturers and there was duplication of programmes.
But Prof Lenga argued that “the universities were responsible for the internal quality assurance of their academic programmes”.
She seemed to delink CHE from public universities by saying: “The commission was only the external quality assurance agency of private universities in Kenya.”
It is unclear why the new measures only seek to micro-manage the chartered universities yet CHE recognises them as fully fledged, with all necessary academic organs.
