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{
    "id": 128931,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/128931/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 306,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Prof. Kamar",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 33,
        "legal_name": "Margaret Jepkoech Kamar",
        "slug": "margaret-kamar"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for allowing me to contribute to this wonderful Motion. I want to thank the Mover of the Motion for giving us a well articulated Motion. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, higher education should be a right to every Kenyan. We thank the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology for spreading loans through the HELB to private universities. We should start asking who benefited from the universities. I happened to have been a university professor and a Deputy Vice- Chancellor. More than 50 per cent of the students who managed to go through the regular programme are from private high schools. When we talk about private high schools, we are talking about students from able families. The computer will capture those students, because the Government uses the marks scored to sponsor university students. If the students who are captured in the regular programme come from private schools, it means that we are capturing students from able homes. So, the students who have been in the Parallel or Module II or in private universities are the ones who have come from public institutions. This means that they are from poor families. This has created a complication because the sponsorship of the Government is obviously to the top students. The students who meet the cut-off points and are admitted to public university under the regular programme get automatic funding. This is the case and yet the students who are left out are normally from poor families. As I support this Motion, I urge the Government, through the HELB, to consider the students who are admitted under the private sponsorship programme even more than the other students, because they are from poor families. It is very important that we identify a clear criteria for giving the loans to the students. If we are talking about a needy student, let us look for the needy student. Let us not even use the cut-off points criteria. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, currently, Uganda hosts more Kenyan students than most of our universities because the education programmes in Uganda are cheaper than those in Kenya. In fact, you will find that we have Kenyan high school students schooling in Uganda. This implies that in spite of the thirst for education in Kenya, our institutions are unable to take all the students. The only way we can enable these institutions to take Kenyan students is to enable the parents, through their children, get support. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, therefore, I recommend that the HELB loans should be spread and should not be limited to the students who are in Module II or privately sponsored students or private institutions because those are the students that we must capture. The universities use a mean grade of C+ and above as the entry point internationally. It is very important that every Kenyan who has got a C+ and above"
}