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{
    "id": 331620,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/331620/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 338,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Prof. Kamar",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 33,
        "legal_name": "Margaret Jepkoech Kamar",
        "slug": "margaret-kamar"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move that The Universities Bill, Bill No. 53 of 2012 be read a Second Time. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the demand for university education in Kenya is enormous. This has resulted in a rapid growth in university enrolment over the last ten years. The Kenya Vision 2030 also places an urgent demand for specific skills and research outputs for the country’s human resource requirements. This ever growing demand and rapid expansion of the university sector has posed several challenges which include access, equity, quality, relevance, financing and governance of university education. Patterns of access to both public and private universities tend to reflect increasing regional gender and socio-economic differences in the country. You will recall that according to the Welfare Monitoring Survey, way back in 1997, it was found that two- thirds of the university students enrolled came from the richest and the second-richest families while only 7.5 per cent representation was from the very poor. This situation is further reflected in gender imbalance in university education as well as access to university education by Kenyans, particularly those with special needs and the marginalized and minorities. Since the year 1997, things have progressed positively but not in the steps that we would have imagined over that long period. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, quality in education is determined by the quality of the students admitted, the learning environment created, the curriculum adopted and the quality of the academic staff in the institution. There have been a number of challenges in addressing these core tenets necessary for ensuring quality. There are also emerging concerns on the need to promote life-long skills and employability of graduates as well as incorporation of the needs of industry and national development priorities in university education. Moreover, the Commission for Higher Education as is established currently has been limited to assuring quality of university education only in the private universities. The current average spending by students at the university level is 31 times, six times and twice as expensive as primary, secondary and tertiary education respectively. This indicates that university education through public universities is particularly expensive to the Government and is not sustainable with the current resource base and has to some extent also influenced the quality of university education. As a result, there are several negative unintended consequences such as the establishment of satellite campuses that do not necessarily have quality learning environment and the focus on courses that can generate high tuition revenue for the institution themselves. This means that some of the strategic degree programmes that the country requires have not been receiving adequate attention. A majority of university teaching staff have also been diverted to go into the teaching arena and thus the quality of research has been reducing."
}