The trouble with universities, and how to resolve the issues
The challenges facing public universities are well known by many. The government has not been giving adequate funding to the universities. The National Treasury does not give adequate resources to public universities. The Ministry of Education appears not to bother about this problem.
The universities are also experiencing governance challenges. There have been cases in court challenging appointment of council members or challenging appointment of vice chancellors (VCs)and their deputies. In many instances, appointment of a VC or deputy VC is challenged on many grounds. There are even ethnic considerations in some of these cases. Politicians want their own people in public universities located in their counties.
These challenges point out that the universities are not playing their traditional role of teaching, research and training. The cases that are presented in courts are similar to cases brought by cartels in the world of business enterprises, and the dark world. The case of the Maasai Mara University and allegations of corruption perhaps explains this.
What is the role of a university?
Universities always exist for the purpose of producing knowledge for the betterment of society. They produce knowledge to transform societies and people in general. They amplify new thoughts and ideas that are required to move the society forward. They are a means to national development.
Universities serve the purpose of developing and skilling human resources for national development. They do this by training men and women who take responsibilities of developing the society. Viewed this way, one may say that the quality of a country’s bureaucracy, civil servants, and even the private sector (businesses) reflects the quality of their universities.
Universities produce knowledge by carrying out research on a regular basis. They are in place to undertake research to improve on what we know; and find out what we do not know. They exist to find out the unknowns, if any, in order improve knowledge of the environment around us.
Public assets
These roles that universities play imply that they are public assets that are meant to deliver public goods. They exist to provide knowledge and training to improve the well-being of the society. They benefit both the public and the private sector.
Countries that value the role of knowledge in national development always consider universities assets to be treasured. Governments protect and promote the interests of the universities because they provide a public good. They produce knowledge to advance the society and improve the wellbeing of all citizens.
In the west and even in South Africa, governments cherish universities because they provide the knowledge they require to transform the society. They are cherished, promoted, and supported in their scientific work. These countries do so because they recognise that they are in a knowledge economy. Only universities can help them build the human capital they require to advance.
Where we went wrong
Our public universities are facing problems, but political leaders and policy makers are not bothered. This is because they neglect the value of knowledge and professionalism in the society. There is little investment in science and research. There is little value attached to research to provide evidence in policy making or even knowledge for national development. We are not alone in ignoring the role of science and research in solving our problems. In 2007, the late President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe paid a witchdoctor who said she could produce diesel from rocks to address Zimbabwe’s fuel shortages. She was given money and material benefits to do so but she did not produce diesel.
Here in Kenya, it is common knowledge that politicians and witchdoctors are good friends during the election period. Politicians prefer witchdoctors to science. They do not invest in scientific polling but invest in magic spells, hoping the spells will help them win an election. In some election petitions, court records show that use of witchdoctors is cited by losers as a reason voters do not support a particular candidate. Our courts have records on this.
Secondly, the government does not cherish universities as national assets. Today, the government would rather bail out loss making private institutions and leave out the universities. We have seen in the past, the government coming fast to bail out private corporations on grounds that they produce public goods.
Thirdly, the internal administration and governance of universities has weakened over the years. Appointment of councils and VCs on patronage, political and ethnic considerations, has played a role in moving the universities away from their core business of knowledge generation.
Universities have become employment bureaus.; the place to go to employ staff who have no relationship with the core mandate of the university. There are public universities where the non-teaching staff are eight times the number of teaching staff. The administrative and support staff in all the large public universities are more than three times the number of teaching staff. Many of these non-teaching staff certainly have no work to do. They sit around, hoping to be given errands. And the errands by their bosses are usually personal.
Two universities in one
I have argued in the past that staffing of universities with more administrative than teaching staff has created two universities in one: Administrative university and the academy.
The administrative university is the more powerful of the two but does not live the mission and vision of the university. It is the one that plunders the resources. It does not exist to generate any ideas or resources but to plunder what is produced by the academy. In fact, the administrative university pray every day for a university without ‘teaching staff’. They have no attachment to the values of a university.
The crises facing all public university are the result of how the administrative university has grown over the years. It has grown so much that it has stifled the growth of the knowledge economy. It is not in the interest of the administrators to produce knowledge. It is in their interest to produce more resources for administration of the university.
Unfortunately, the two universities do not speak the same language. The academy speaks the language of investment in teaching and learning, research, and training for national development and for social transformation. The administrative university speaks the language of resources. They see the university in terms of an enterprise to produce commodities for sale. To them, it is useless to have a university that does not make money.
But the academy has its failures too. Kenyan scholars are performing poorly compared to those in South Africa and the developed world. Not many Kenyan scholars are visible in international publication spaces. Many do not publish in peer reviewed journals. It is true that Kenya is ranked high in some of these spaces, but compared to who? They cannot compare well with South Africa or South East Asia in these spaces. These are the spaces that are critical for visibility of researchers – they connect to research grant makers and other profiles. Without this visibility, it is not possible to generate adequate research grants.
What are the solutions?
Solutions lie in the government acknowledging that universities provide public good. They exist to provide knowledge to transform the society. And knowledge cannot be quantified like products in a factory. The impact of knowledge is found when it meets ignorance.
A responsible government nurtures its universities because of their value as assets. It is the responsibility of the government to strengthen the universities; not to destroy them.
Secondly and tied to the above point, the universities must do away with the two universities in one. The administrative branch must be dissolved. Retrenchment should take place as a priority. IT is better to have no administrators than to have a university full of staff whose everyday job is not in line with the core business of the university.
Of course, retrenchment cannot take place. The administrative university is so powerful that it cannot let this happen. To the administrative university, the universities are better off if the teaching staff are few and not noisy.
There is need for endowment funds. The universities should begin thinking about how to engage effectively with industry and other universities to establish endowment funds. This is the way to go to add to what the government is providing. BY DAILY NATION
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