Kenyan Universities Mull Fee Hike as Debt Headache Worsens

Poor financial management, underfunding, ethnicity-driven hiring and blatant violation of the law are some of the factors that have brought public universities to their knees.

An analysis of the most recent reports filed by Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu on public universities shows many of them are technically insolvent and have to rely on funding from government and expensive short-term loans.

Students and their parents may have to bear the brunt of the rot by paying higher fees, which appears to be the only way the government-owned institutions can be kept afloat.

Worryingly, only a few of the institutions attracted income from their research activities, a serious indictment of their performance on the core function of a university.

Besides financial woes, Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu has flagged violation of the law in hiring of staff, with reports indicating a majority of the institutions' employees are from the dominant communities where they are established, in contravention of the National Cohesion and Integration Act, 2008, writes David Muchunguh for The Nation.