The Universities Act of 2014 forbade universities from offering courses that are supposed to be taught at technical colleges.
Speaking during the launch of a policy brief on “graduate employability” in sub-Saharan Africa at Kenyatta University in October 2014, then Education Cabinet Secretary, Prof. Jacob Kaimenyi, had said that, “It is sad that universities are scrambling to offer training in certificate and diploma courses, yet they are supposed to be higher education institutions.”
Five years down the line, the debate is once more being brought up.
Speaking during a recent conference for technical training institutions held at Rift Valley Technical Training Institute in Eldoret, Edwin Tarno, the institution’s principal, as well as the chairman of Kenya Association of Technical Training Institutions (KATTI), claimed that universities are rushing to graduate diploma students without proper training.
This, he explained, was because universities currently offer diploma courses for only two years while technical training institutions offer the same courses for three years.
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At the beginning of 2017 however, the Commission for University Education (CUE) issued a directive that all universities must stop offering diploma and certificate courses by July 2017 and, instead, concentrate on degree courses.
Universities have moved to court to dispute this directive.
