University fees in Kenya’s public institutions of higher learning should be tripled to ensure a better quality of education, vice chancellors have maintained.
This comes even after students threatened to strike and Members of Parliament (MPs) threatened to move to court to block a proposal by the VCs to hike school fees threefold.
Despite the threats, the university heads have remained resolute on the proposal they presented to Parliament on February 23, 2019.
The university administrators say the government allocates only Sh36 billion which they say is just half of what the institutions need.
“The cost of everything has gone up. If we’re going to run universities in a way that would make them competitive, we need to ensure that they are properly funded,” said Prof. Francis Aduol, the Chairman of the Vice Chancellor’s Committee.
“We can no longer work with the parameters of 1989 to run universities in 2019.”
Prof. Aduol further noted that the government has the option of covering the proposed fees in totality if the students and parents were to be spared from the burden of digging deeper into their pockets.
In their proposal, the institution heads want fees increased from Sh16,000 to Sh48,000 per semester.
“We are cutting corners and students are being shortchanged… It is scandalous that a student in university is paying Sh16,000 as fees while those in technical colleges are paying Sh26,000. This does not add up,” said Aduol.
“The cost of training a course back then was Sh86,000, but due to inflation the cost has gone up threefold,” University of Embu VC Daniel Mugendi told the Parliament Committee over a week ago.
