KENYA
University deregisters thousands of inactive students
Kenya’s University of Nairobi has deregistered more than 30,000 inactive students who had overstayed for more than double the period normally required to complete a degree programme. This has effectively reduced the number of enrolled students from a high of 80,000 to 50,000.According to Professor Stephen Kiama, the vice-chancellor, the deregistered students comprised 37.5% of the total enrolment, including those who have temporarily withdrawn or deferred their studies indefinitely and those who had been discontinued for failing examinations.
“We started that exercise mid-last year and, by now, we have expunged slightly above 30,000 students that have overstayed or had not been academically active,” said Kiama.
Hardest hit by the ongoing enrolment clean-up exercise had been the self-sponsored students who may have dropped out of the university because of an inability to pay tuition fees.
High casualties are seen among the masters degree students who have not been able to complete their studies within the stipulated timelines, for inability to finish the research requirements after successfully completing one year of course work.
In this category, there had been many part-time students who were affected by their employment commitments and lack of funds for fees.
According to Professor Julius Ogeng’o, the deputy vice-chancellor of academic affairs, students at the University of Nairobi are given double the number of years a degree programme normally takes.
“In this regard, students taking a four-year bachelor degree have up to eight years to complete, while those taking a masters degree of two years have four years to graduate,” said Ogeng’o.
Funding for active students
In this context, the University of Nairobi and other public universities in Kenya had, over time, amassed many ‘over-stayed’ students whose positions as students had expired, either after dropping out for various reasons or after failing examinations but remaining listed on the register.
According to Kiama, the university will ensure that only active students will receive academic services.
“If you have not been active, we will remove you from our system so that we can focus on those who have registered with us and are spending their time here,” said Kiama.
The deregistration of the students was mooted in 2020 by the University Funding Board when it was realised that the government was providing public universities with funding that included support of students who had over-stayed, some of whom had even withdrawn from the universities altogether.
Under the current model, the government caters for 80% of the unit cost of a course while the remaining 20% is borne by the universities’ income-generating activities, direct tuition fees or student loans from the Higher Education Loans Board.
But, to avoid leakage of funds, the Universities Fund Board decided to allocate finances to the universities based on the number of active students and the degree courses they study. To ensure compliance, the government withheld funds until enrolment registers had been cleaned up.
According to Kiama, the University of Nairobi will no longer have irregular students who register, do one or two courses and then disappear, but do not say where they have gone.
To achieve that objective, the university has introduced a comprehensive lecturers’ management system that will ensure that only active students will sit for examinations and have their marks recorded. In this case, marks for students with fees arrears will not be reflected on the system.
The new hardline position in higher education in Kenya is expected to affect students from poor households and part-time students without reliable funding streams to support their education.
In this regard, the existence of a large number of inactive students in public universities is an indicator that actual access to higher education is much lower than has been reported.
For instance, whereas the Principal Secretary for Higher Education, Simon Nabukwesi, last year placed enrolment in universities at 566,042 students, this figure included about 30% of inactive students, as universities had not yet embarked on the deregistering of over-stayed students.
It is against this background of internal inefficiency that the International Monetary Fund has pushed for reforms at the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Moi University.