The government is now seeking to compel public institutions of higher learning to secure jobs for their graduates failure to which it will take action against them.
In a fresh move to save millions of unemployed graduates, the University Fund, which is tasked with determining money released to the institutions, is seeking to compel varsities to secure jobs for graduates.
According to the proposal, universities whose graduates fail to secure jobs within four years of graduation will have their funds slashed.
This proposal is based on five performance indicators, including absorption of an institution’s graduates in the job market, research, and training on financial management for top officials.
The new formula, which may be life-saving for graduates languishing in unemployment, is a departure from the current formula that allocates funds based on the number of students and the cost of courses at the institutions.
“Performance-based funding is funding aimed at allocating a portion of universities education budget according to specific performance measures. It makes funding allocating more transparent and more competitive,” University Fund stated in its proposal.
“The key performance indicators to be considered will be four-year graduation rate, graduate employability rate (one year after graduation) and research inputs.”
Kenya has 102 public universities and campuses with over 452,089 students. Despite the high enrolment numbers most graduates end up not getting jobs.
This move follows the latest directive from the World Bank seeking to force the government to merge some public universities citing duplication of courses and the need to cut spending.
World Bank through an advisory to the government, cautioned that there was a need for the government to carry out urgent reforms in the sector, which has been rocked with debt for the past few years.
“Address the proliferation of state-owned companies (SCs) and rationalise commercial and non-commercial SCs. For example, measures to address overlapping mandates and consolidating SCs in the education sector could improve the efficiency of public spending on higher education and reduce spending pressures," the World Bank cautioned.
World Bank argued that some public universities made losses for over three straight years over-burdening the government.
"Accelerating the commercial SCs rationalisation agenda could help plug losses to the exchequer while increasing overall economic efficiency. A focus could be placed on systematically poorly performing SCs that have recorded persistent losses for an extended period of three years," the World Bank advised.
