By James Wakahiu
Worth Noting:
- “Speaking of access, the private sector also plays a role in absorbing a lot of human resource that is churned into the labour market. Can you imagine if all students who graduate had to be employed in the public sector? Private sector has provided opportunities across board; access for students, academia, support staff and industry. Government appreciates these interventions and also supports students to access university education by providing capitation,” he said.
- KEPSA is the apex body of the private sector in Kenya. “This in itself is an opportunity for private sector players to collaborate with academia to uplift the training in higher education in Kenya,” said Dr Gaitho.
The government should consider boosting funding to private schools, universities and colleges since it is the private sector that has the capacity and flexibility to expand faster to boost Kenya’s chances of becoming a regional hub for education.
Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) Education Board Chairman, Dr Vincent Gaitho says private sector education providers came about to bridge the gap where government was overwhelmed with the demand. “The churches were among the first private providers of education when it became evident that the government was not able to provide sufficient education spaces to its citizens,” he said.
In an interview, Dr Gaitho said in the nineties, the advent of private higher education, addressed the issues that were there when it came to enrolment. At that time, admission to university was pegged to bed capacity. At this point many parents started to take their children abroad to pursue university education because of the limited access locally. “This gap then created an opportunity for private universities to admit students to curtail this dollar flight. Currently almost half of the universities in Kenya are private universities,” he added.
Dr Gaitho, who is also Pro-Chancellor Mount Kenya University (MKU) said the government is now funding Sh157, 000 per student in public universities compared to Sh67, 000 in private universities. “Treasury is the biggest beneficiary while students enjoy comfort of private sector ambience and conducive environment offered in the private institutions. There is always heavy traffic towards private universities whenever the government opens the inter-universities transfer window,” he said.
Prof Gaitho urged political parties and the in-coming government to think of better ways of making public universities centres of excellence to help address national development issues than making them means of achieving shallow political interests. “It is a high time that we cast the net wider by making the country an education hub for international students rather than fight over what the Kenyan catchment can offer,” he added.
He said education is a big undertaking as evidenced by the huge National Budget allocation; an indication of how important education is. It is a necessary investment as evidenced by the government and parents’ belief in the value of education. Going back in history, the founding president believed that education was important to remove ignorance giving people an edge to compete in life.
But private education provision is a gamble. There is always the issue of double taxation especially to parents, who pay taxes to support public education sector but because of issues of may be quality and access, the same parents will pay to access private education institutions for the service.
“Speaking of access, the private sector also plays a role in absorbing a lot of human resource that is churned into the labour market. Can you imagine if all students who graduate had to be employed in the public sector? Private sector has provided opportunities across board; access for students, academia, support staff and industry. Government appreciates these interventions and also supports students to access university education by providing capitation,” he said.
KEPSA is the apex body of the private sector in Kenya. “This in itself is an opportunity for private sector players to collaborate with academia to uplift the training in higher education in Kenya,” said Dr Gaitho.
He said the Education Sector (EdSec) Board at Kepsa is a significant enabler recognized for the efforts it puts to articulate education matters and more so the skills development area which promotes industry – academia linkages. The other sector boards are also top consumers of output of human capital from the education sector.
“The biggest opportunity is on how the collaboration will solve the human capacity issues as expressed by others sectors. Some of the possible areas of collaboration include research, where industry may undertake consultancies from tertiary institutions which can solve industry challenges and improve their competitiveness. Another is for industry to offer internship, attachment and apprenticeship opportunities to students to improve on competencies and for a better qualified labour force,” Dr Gaitho said.
He regretted that for a long time, the term “half baked” graduate has been used to describe the caliber of students graduating from our local universities and colleges. “The question is, to what extent do we get to graduate “fully baked” students? This issue can be sufficiently addressed when there is a structured industry-academia linkages framework.” He said.
He urged that involvement of employers will assist in identifying skills required by the industry and their participation in the delivery of relevant skills required. “The Education Sector Board is committed to working with the other sector boards to support the “software” such as human resource. For better outcomes, the “hardware” which includes infrastructure must be combined with human capital to ensure sustainability. For the students, they get first – hand experience at the processes, gaining valuable knowledge, this is the power of industry academia linkage,” said the Pro Chancellor.
He applauded the government for recognizing the importance of private sector providers especially by enabling their participation at various public sector Boards which has allowed for inclusivity in these organisations. To the placement issue, colleges especially TVET institutions must make deliberate efforts to be compliant and work towards shedding off the negative tag associated with some of them as regards to quality. Private colleges must align themselves with the economic and industrial agenda of the country, offer courses and programs that will provide students with a higher chance for employment.
These institutions need to be competitive by training skills needed so that they can attract students to their colleges and universities. Students these days are well informed and they have the liberty to choose institutions and courses they believe will give them a better chance at being employable. It is up to universities and colleges to re – think their enrolment strategy and course offerings. Universities need to set up centers of excellence to develop niche based training that will allow for more specialized and relevant output.
Dr Gaitho said education as an industry was highly affected by the COVID 19 pandemic. “Unless someone is ignorant, I believe the industry is now awake to the fact that brick and mortar will not be the future,” he said.
Provision of education will not depend on ambience and infrastructure but on how quickly and effectively we take up online and digital learning. Going forward, competition will be on providing global qualifications. “Our researchers should be focused on creating home based solutions. Take the current issue on vaccines, African countries are waiting for vaccines from other parts of the world. We need to wake up to developing home grown solutions for our problems. Let us look within the box and not necessarily outside the box. Sometimes when we look outside the box sometimes we end up with more escapist ideas than if we looked within for solutions.
Elizabeth Angira