University Don urges Govt to fund private institutions to improve education

The Government should consider boosting funding to private schools, universities and colleges to enhance Kenya’s chances of becoming a regional hub for education.

Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) Education Board Chairman, Dr Vincent Gaitho says the private sector education providers main objective is to bridge the gap by supporting government meet 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.

Dr Gaitho said admission to university in the 90s was pegged on bed capacity saying the gap then created an opportunity for private universities to admit students to curtail this dollar flight.

Dr Gaitho, who is also Pro-Chancellor Mount Kenya University (MKU) said the government is now funding Ksh 157, 000 per student in public universities compared to Ksh 67, 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.

He said the Education Sector (EdSec) Board at Kepsa is a significant enabler recognized for its efforts in articulating education matters and skills development which promotes the industry.

“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 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.

Provision of education will not depend on ambience and infrastructure but on how quickly and effectively we take up online and digital learning.

“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,” He said.