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{
    "id": 99145,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/99145/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 398,
    "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",
        "slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
    },
    "content": "There are issues of quality and I agree with the Committee. This idea of introducing parallel degree programmes and regular programmes bring in more students to universities and there is no capacity to address them. This has caused many problems. In fact, some of these problems we are talking about, for example, registration also come from the need for universities to keep on opening up and bringing more students without enough facility. In terms of justification, yes, let us agree that even as we do not like programmes, much of the monies that the universities use now to expand are coming from parallel degree programmes. All the buildings that you are seeing coming up are from students under the parallel degree programmes. So, the parallel programme in some way is complementing Government resources that were never enough to support university expansion. It is a dilemma. We need to expand our universities, so that we can give more Kenyans an opportunity. The Government does not have enough resources to ensure that we can accelerate that expansion. So, we must strike a balance whereby those who can afford to pay a little bit for that education, pay for that education as it is in other countries such as those in Europe, America and so on. Those who can afford to pay for university education are required to pay much more. We need to ask many questions: Is it really right that 90 per cent of the students who apply for university loans actually get the loans, when we know 60 per cent of the students in our universities, especially in key programmes like engineering and medicine come from largely privileged backgrounds? They went to expensive primary schools and expensive high schools. What is happening now is that students from those kinds of families do not make it through the regular programme and their parents take them to parallel degree programmes? They get them even to “jump” the years; they do not have to wait for two years. You can start studies in Medicine right away because your parent can afford to buy the degree. So, this is a very serious issue. So, if there is that category of Kenyans who can pay so much, why do we not then support a strong private wing of our university system; a very strong private high school wing, so that those who can afford can complement Government resources by also ensuring that we expand university education? Then, we would make those resources available to support the very poor who, for example, cannot meet the deadlines to register for examinations because they do not have the money. They are also in a parallel degree programme because they could not compete for a regular programme in the first place because of the kind of schools they went to. So, these are important issues that we need to address. They are issues that can be resolved through consensus and us sitting together appreciating the need for expansion"
}