University funding cut by 20%, focus now shifts to TVET

Kenya has effected a further cut in funding to public universities for the financial year beginning July 2022 as enrolment numbers continue to dip.

The National Treasury, in a budget statement for the coming fiscal period, said it had allocated US$793 million from the US$1.003 billion allocated for the current financial year, a 20% cut.

The universities had requested US$1.8 billion from the government in their budget plans. The funding gap for public universities has more than doubled in the past two years, signalling even tougher days ahead for the cash-strapped institutions.

Public universities rely largely on government subsidies to run their operations. The government capitation, however, currently covers only 57% of the learners, instead of the target of 80%. This allocation is applied mainly to pay staff salaries, leaving little or no funding for promoting quality.

The budget cuts came in as data showed that enrolments to public universities fell for the first time in three years, from 452,089 last year to 448,482 in the current year.

The shortfall in funding, university administrators now reckon, will see most of the institutions struggle to remain afloat as the amount allocated by the government is not adequate to meet their expenditures in the light of higher student enrolments.

This is made worse by the fact that the universities have, in the recent past, seen their internally generated funds dwindle following changes in government policy.

Until recently, universities would make up for the shortfall in government disbursements by raising revenue from enrolling self-sponsored students to the erstwhile lucrative parallel degree programmes.

But there has been a sharp decline in the number of self-sponsored students over the past three years since the government lowered the entry requirement for high school leavers to join universities.

Due to the unhealthy financial position of the public universities, there was the termination of employment of staff and reduction of salaries and wages leading to low motivation and poor well-being.

TVET numbers are growing

But not everyone in the education sector is struggling.

In what could be indicative of a trend where more and more learners are showing a preference for technical colleges rather than universities, the data by the Kenya Bureau of Statistics showed that enrolment to the institutions increased by 22% during the period.

The number of students joining technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges hit 265,095 from 217,440, the biggest jump ever in the past five years.

The turn of events is aligned to the government’s increased focus on growing the technical segment of the education sector with increased funding and expansion of infrastructure.

In the budget statement, Ukur Yatani, Kenya’s Treasury cabinet secretary, said the government had set aside US$52 million as capitation for TVET students in the coming year, up from US$48 million in the current year.

Further, US$5.2 million has been set aside for infrastructure development within this subsector.

Back to the universities, government data shows that public universities have statutory debts totalling US$190 million owed to the Kenya Revenue Authority.

This is in addition to outstanding statutory obligations to pension schemes, and workers’ savings and cooperative societies. The University of Nairobi leads with US$55 million and US$27 million respectively.

“The University of Nairobi has been operating under a huge deficit,” Stephen Kiama, its vice-chancellor, said in a recent comment to reporters.