This year thousands of Kenyan
students, having completed their secondary education, and desiring to further
it by joining a university will have their hopes dashed as the pass mark shifts
ever higher with fewer university places to go around.
There are
two causes for this predicament. The first is the fact that population growth
has far outstripped the growth in University places. The mushrooming of private
universities and the provision of parallel courses is a much needed salve but
still the gates of the universities are straining at the hinges as more and
more clamour for a place in their halls.
The second
and perhaps more powerful reason behind this continuous despair is the high social demand among Kenyans for a university degree. It is the cap every educated
person must wear, the badge that sets societies' worthies apart from the crowd.
So it is that every year, the average Kenyan family pushes itself to the brink
of financial disaster, disposing of precious family assets and lifetime savings
in an all-out-effort to send their children to university. This all, in the
vain attempt to buy their children a way out of the grinding nothingness of the
village and urban estate, and thrust them onto the stage of opportunity, wealth
and prestige.
Last week,
Maseno University Chancellor Prof Bethwel Ogot warned of a further swelling of
the disappointed train. The future he says will see only those earning an A- or
above in their national exams qualify for entrance into university under the
Joint Admissions Board's programme. The rest will have to find some other way,
and if the thought of private university, the parallel programmes or study
abroad is financially daunting they may settle for a place at one of the nation's
polytechnics or even a teacher training college.
Four years
later and after a great deal of compromising, if all has gone according to plan, the great halls of knowledge will
spit out another great mass of experts in Food Nutrition, Fisheries, Veterinary
Medicine, Law, etc who have neither the inclination nor the qualification to
take up jobs in these fields. Even sadder, another great number, eager to
pursue their career of choice will find that neither the government nor private
industry can absorb them. So it is that years after embarking on the trip up
the pyramid of knowledge, clawing their way to its very apex, these all will
find themselves thrown off just as the notion to raise their hands in victory
suggests itself to their minds.
Every year,
thousands of Kenyans are taken into jobs that they would have had every
competence to take up fresh out of high school, with the same on the job
training that they still require after wasting away family resources and
personal time in a fruitless pursuit of paper qualifications. So it is that
every year, our education throws up thousands more of these servants, totally
lacking in independence or creative zeal, all of them seeking the assurance of
a secure teat, and with not enough teats to go around, the losers clinging on for
sustenance any which way.
And there
ends the six-lane highway out of the slums and the villages, bumping unexpectedly into the
rude awakening that the immolation of communal wealth in the name of the illusion of material return was unjustified. The great sacrifice and the glaring
opportunity cost as we realise that our economic advancement as a nation does
not depend on the numbers of graduates, but on their potential for contribution to
the national development call out for our attention. The bright lights of the city are not a dream we should discourage,
but there are better ways to get there than to preach education as an intrinsic
good. More Kenyans need training in technology and advanced service industries,
fewer Kenyans need to be trained as hospitality workers or lawyers. The
misplaced sacrifice we are making is turning our tertiary institutions, far
from engines of growth, into engines of despair and cause of national
enervation.
Survival
for the fittest is a permissible compromise, but what is not is that the system's
rejects leave with little useful knowledge and even worse that they are
neutered of their entrepreneurial zeal.
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This is profound Wanyama, and you should consider sending this piece to the Ministry of Education.