COVID-19 – Fuelling a crisis already in the making

Half a million university students in Kenya are among the approximately 220 million higher education students around the world whose learning has been disrupted by forced closures of universities occasioned by COVID-19. But, whereas many universities, especially those in developed countries, have successfully moved to online learning, learning continuity in Kenya’s universities has been largely haphazard as a result of the digital divide.

According to Dr Richard Bosire, the chairman of the Universities’ Academic Staff Union at the University of Nairobi, many students, especially those from public universities, do not have laptops or money to buy internet data bundles which would allow them to engage in remote online learning. “So what is the point of starting classes when only well-off students will log in?” asks Bosire.

Online learning through Zoom meetings, Google Classroom and Cisco Webex has been successfully picked up, mostly in leading private universities such as the United States International University-Africa and Strathmore University, as well as in some departments at higher-ranking public universities, such as the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and Egerton University.

Rural learning at a standstill

Although the government has urged universities to roll out online classes, e-learning is at a standstill in universities and satellite campuses in rural areas where internet connectivity is low. Largely excluded from distance learning, irrespective of their universities, are poor students who cannot afford the cost of access to digital platforms.

Therefore, while internet tools are deemed to offer the best solutions to promote learning during the pandemic, for many university students in Kenya it has not even been an option. Thus COVID-19 has exposed the unequal socio-economic makeup of Kenyan higher education, which is dominated by students from well-off households.

According to a World Bank study published in 2019, Improving Higher Education Performance in Kenya: A policy report, “a young Kenyan from the richest income group is 49 times more likely to access higher education than one from the lowest income group.”

Poor students tend to progress less readily through primary and secondary education than those coming from groups with higher cultural and economic capital and are less prepared academically when they take the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, the secondary education exit examination that is used for student admission to university.

Increasing disadvantage

Unfortunately, coronavirus is now threatening enrolment in higher education by increasing the number of disadvantaged students. According to a World Bank briefing, Kenya Economic Update, April 2020: Turbulent times for growth in Kenya, in the year ahead, the country’s economic growth is predicted to fall below 0.2%.

According to Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, vice-chancellor of United States International University-Africa, the COVID-19 epidemic may serve to hasten a crisis that was already developing since 2016. Declines in public funding for university education had already led to the development of cost-sharing in which some students, chosen by their scores in secondary school-leaving examinations, were sponsored by the government, while the rest paid full-cost tuition fees.

Quite unexpectedly, the dual-track tuition model that was pioneered by Uganda’s Makerere University in the last decade of the 20th century – and thereafter adopted by public universities in East Africa – collapsed in Kenya in 2016, as the number of qualifying students in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) dropped.

“The market for self-sponsored students evaporated overnight and pushed public universities into a financial crisis,” Zeleza told University World News in an interview in Nairobi.

Declining enrolment

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, enrolment has been dropping steadily from a high of 537,689 students in the 2016-17 academic year to 507,473 students in the current academic year. In the last two years, the number of public university campuses has declined by 42.3% to currently stand at 64 from a record high of 111 in 2018.

“The reduction of campuses was attributed to decreasing admission numbers, resulting from low numbers of candidates scoring a minimum university entry grade in the KCSE,” said Zachary Mwangi Chege, the director-general of the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

According to Zeleza, the loss of tuition fees as a result of dwindling numbers of self-sponsored students, as well as declining state funding in public universities, have led to most universities in Kenya becoming virtually bankrupt.

“Many of those universities are unable to pay salaries on time or provide adequate faculty, teaching and learning facilities,” said Zeleza, who is a former vice-president for academic affairs at Quinnipiac University in the United States.

In his assessment, Zeleza predicts the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to threaten the expansion of enrolment in Kenyan universities, which continue to be heavily dependent on tuition fees and government grants.

“Many potential students will be less able to pay for full-cost user fees, a situation that will lead to further shrinking of sources of revenue and investments for the universities until the economy recovers and the quality of secondary education improves substantially,” said Zeleza.

In his book, The Transformation of Global Higher Education, 1945-2015, Zeleza advises universities in Sub-Saharan Africa to start thinking beyond surviving on tuition fees and to explore additional financing strategies such as fundraising, novel student aid programmes, philanthropy and targeted student loans.

But the question still remains as to how prepared Kenyan universities are, not just to face the shocks brought on by the coronavirus, but any others in the future.

To avoid the situation in which the cost of university education is a deterrent for young people from lower socio-economic groups, during COVID-19 and thereafter, Zeleza is urging higher education authorities in Kenya to discard the parallel fee system and adopt instead a targeted free tuition scheme.

“This would require shifting from a system of fee exemptions that benefit the most qualified students from an academic standpoint to a system in which the neediest students who qualify for university education would not pay tuition fees,” he said.