200 graduates from Egerton University will have to take remedial classes at the institution if they want to secure jobs with their degrees.
The students who had studied Bachelor of Science, Water and Environmental Engineering and graduated in 2019, reported finding difficulty securing jobs after failing to secure approval from the Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK).
The Research and Education Committee of the National Assembly, after intervening in the matter, recommended that the students should be offered eight remedial courses to boost the quality of their degrees.
Members of Parliament established that Egerton University offered the course without the approval of the Commission for University Education (CUE), making the graduates unemployable.
“The schedule of offering the remedial courses should start in September 2022 and concludes latest by December 2024 through a planned schedule,” the statement by the Research and Education Committee of the National Assembly read in part, as per Nation.
In March 2022, three of the graduates had petitioned National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi demanding Ksh2.2 million from the institution after failing to secure employment after graduating.
In their petition, they argued that they had joined the institution in 2014 and were assured that the degree they pursued had been accredited by CUE.
As a result, they struggled to secure recognition by EBK after graduation and could not offer their services professionally.
"This is a direct implication that we cannot be registered by the Engineers Board of Kenya and offer professional services as Section 49 of the Engineers Act prohibits the employment of persons, not registered under the Act, from offering engineering professional services or works.
"Further, Section 50 of the Act provides that a person who is not registered as a professional engineer or firm shall not be entitled to submit engineering plans, surveys, drawings, schemes, proposals, reports, designs or studies to any person or authority in Kenya," their petition read in part at the time.
The trio, therefore, wanted the University to be compelled to offer them the eight remedial courses as well as a payment of Ksh750,000 each to facilitate their studies.
In their petition, the graduates also wanted the university stopped from offering the course which was launched in 1997.
