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"id": 95167,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology",
"speaker": {
"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the definition about parallel and regular has been made and the point has been made that maybe even that itself is not such a positive outlook. That we should be thinking much more about talking about students and, in fact, that is why universities have now come up with another way of looking at it and talking about Module I and Module II students instead of talking about parallel and regular students. Now, with the free primary school education, there is even greater pressure on secondary schools to admit more and those numbers have to be accommodated in the universities. A number of measures have been taken to take account of what is happening now but also of the anticipated expansion. Recently, 13 new constituent colleges have been opened and public universities that used to admit only 10,000 students on the regular programme are admitting now almost 20,000 students. In addition, the Government is encouraging the private sector through a variety of incentives. Unfortunately, these have not really taken root but every effort is being made to encourage private universities to expand and cater for students who can pay more. In fact, in the long-term, if our private universities become bigger and stronger and they also begin to open up new degree programmes in the sciences, engineering, and medicine, which is currently not the case, then we will have a possibility of many of the Kenyans who can afford to pay for university education and who are already joining public universities as private students to be able to join a specific line of private education all the way from, as Members of Parliament were talking of pre school, nursery education, primary education in academies to top national schools. Now even we have a phenomena of private secondary schools so that, that group of students as is often the case in Europe and America, you can follow a private line all through because you can afford to pay for it. But, currently, that is not the case because those opportunities are not there as much in private universities. They may be there for liberal sciences from Bachelor of Commerce Degree and other degrees but we still have to have our private universities open up in engineering, medicine and other sciences. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I made the point that already regular students are heavily subsidized by the Government, but there is also a move to begin to accommodate parallel degree students appreciating the fact that not all those who go to universities through parallel degree programmes are rich students. As a matter of fact, there are very poor ones now. This applies to teachers or even to young people who could not make it because of the kind of school they went to. They went to a day school and you only got a C+ (plus) because of their background. A lot of those kind of students are now having to only come to parallel degree programmes because they just cannot compete for the regular degree programme. It is impossible for them. So they are needy students and the numbers are increasing more and more and we need to take care of them. That is why beginning last year, the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) has already opened up to students in parallel degree programmes in terms of making loans accessible to them. In addition to the HELB programme, there is also a bursary programme by the Ministry of Education. It is not a lot of money. I mean it is like Kshs40,000 or Kshs50,000 a year for a student in the programme who can also benefit from the bursary of the Ministry. This applies to not only those in the parallel degree programmes within public universities, but also those in private universities. From this year, it will apply to students who are in other East African countries. There is also an effort to make university education less expensive. This year, we have started a programme of opening up universities in Kenya. This is going to be a larger African university but it will have its centre in Kenya. When you open universities, when you have distant learning programmes, when you have day universities, when you take universities to communities, now we are talking of counties in the new Constitution. We should have a university in every county in this county. In other words, we should take universities closer to the people so that universities do not become privileges of those only who are near urban centres or the more developed parts of this country. Therefore, with those kinds of environment, you can access university education that is affordable because expenses related to boarding and transportation will not be a major consideration. In other words, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in appreciation of the fact that we need to do much more in terms of opening, we are trying other alternatives in addition to availing resources to students who are joining parallel degree programmes and in private universities. Important points have been made about the disadvantages of the parallel degree programme, but in spite of all the positive things that go with it, there are serious problems. The first one, of course, is equity. It is a very inequitable system. It is inequitable in the sense that if you are from a well off background and you do not make it to the university to do medicine or engineering, you can still do medicine and engineering with your B+ (plus) or B. This is because there is room for that category of students who can pay for law degrees, engineering and medical degrees as long as they can afford. The inequality goes beyond access. Also in terms of when you finish, I had made the point earlier on, that you can start your degree programme this year instead of waiting for two years like the other students are waiting. So inequality is a big problem. It is a serious problem. Secondly, there is also the issue of quality. Yes, our universities are under a lot of pressure. The more we open up for students with resources is not always commensurate with the numbers that you are bringing in. You have same number of lecturers more or less, same number of facilities even though there is marked improvement in terms of building of new facilities and so quality gets compromised, in that you have the same people who have to teach different sets of students and that there is more or less competition to teach more and more students and that limits the amount of time university professors have got for research even to reflect so that you bring in new knowledge in teaching universities. There is also a problem of localizing universities. As we open up new institutions and as we expand, most of the students who are coming into these programmes actually happen to come from local areas where those universities are situated for a number of reasons including costs. It is not necessarily because of the people that manage them as one Member of Parliament said. It is okay to localize if it does not intensify problems of tribalism, management and in terms of numbers that you find in these programmes and so on. So, these are some of the problems. I mean there is a cost. We have to ask repeatedly questions about whether or not the opening up is worth it. If you go to India or America, there is a variety of institutions from very low quality to very high quality, and with time, there is stabilization. With the Commission for Higher Education (CHE) being strengthened, we are getting to a point where universities will be charged much more stringently to improve on quality. A number of untruths have been made that Kenya is the only country offering the parallel degree programme. It is not true. The same programme is being offered in Uganda, Tanzania and many other countries. It is also not true that money is not ploughed back. A lot of money from the parallel degree programme is ploughed back to those institutions. If you go to universities, you will realize that they are neater and there are more buildings coming up than before. In fact, universities are really now vibrant institutions because stalled projects that were in institutions like Moi University and Egerton University are now being completed courtesy of money that is available. The parallel degree programme is not only for weak students. Like I have said before, even very strong students are joining parallel degree programmes and performance has nothing to do with the grade. An hon. Member said here that if you do medicine and you had a B+ (plus) or a B, you cannot be expected to be a good doctor. Being good in whatever you do has nothing to do with being a top book warm. Sometimes, the top book warmers are not the best performers when they go to the place of work. So how you do it at the university or whether you got an âAâ or First Class has little to do with how well you will perform in the world of work. So we cannot judge and say that if you had a lower grade, therefore, you will not do as well. It is not true also that students in the parallel degree programme are getting more time, and, therefore, those in the regular programmes are performing worse because lecturers are spending more time on the parallel degree students. We need to see how we can charge students on the basis of ability. We are saying there are many students who are paid for by Government in the public school line that can afford. They went to expensive schools, sometimes more expensive schools than what they are paying now when at the university and if we can get many more of those students to pay more, then we will have resources that can be used to subsidize the education of the poor. Right now, our system of determining need does not discriminate well enough between those who can afford and those who cannot. Meanwhile, we have to mobilize resources from individuals, CDF, Government, donors and the business community. We need to sit as stakeholders, Members of Parliament, the business community, parents and university vice-chancellors to agree on the way forward with regard to university education from the point of view of access, quality and how we manage so that as we open up, we come up with the common understanding of how we need to take university education forward. Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir."
}