First class honours don't put food on the table

Last week, universities flooded the market with ‘born again’ comrades who, in a couple of years, will be wondering which madness causes rioting campus students to stone motorists.

A good number of them were strutting around in academic agbadas and I felt mighty proud of them because they had miraculously managed to stay alive against all odds. University is a jungle.

I also noted how proud and happy their parents looked. Educating a kid from kindergarten to university costs an arm and a leg. There can be no better relief than the hope that next time you see a chap who has extorted cash from you for years, you say, lipa pesa!

The parents who were proudest were, of course, those whose kids had hammered first class honours. But I suspect there were also hundreds of parents who were gnashing their teeth because their children spent four years breaking wind, fornicating and burning weed instead of dubbing lecture notes.

But in the words of Christ, the Son of Man, verily, verily, I say unto thee, the parents of the scoundrels who barely graduated will be laughing all the way to bank, and proudly so, very soon.

You see, a student who scores a first class is the kind of joker who follows rules, which sadly is a most idiotic enterprise in a country like Kenya where rules are for wimps.

Such students only survive in the corporate world where there is order, or in government where there are regulations (on paper).

Expect the guys who barely graduated to do quite well in the informal sector. They will thrive as businessmen and women, cutting deals, receiving and giving kickbacks and selling air. Being very expressive and eloquent crooks, they will rise up pretty fast.

In no time, they will have made enough bucks to join politics where the real money lies. Meanwhile, our first class fellow will be some broke academic or frustrated bureaucrat formulating policies for a pittance.