The Ministry of Education is implementing far-reaching changes that will overhaul the management of public universities.
This comes in the face of rising nepotism in recruitment of top officials.
Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed has constituted a special team of ministry officials that will scrutinise proposed lists of vice chancellors from councils – with a view to ensuring those appointed go through a fair and meritocracy-ridden process.
The Tenure Review Committee, will also vet proposed lists of deputy vice chancellors of public universities and principals of constituent colleges.
“The committee also handles the appointment if councils and chancellors of public universities,” says a brief on Status of University Education in Kenya prepared by outgoing Principal Secretary Micheni Ntiba.
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According to the document, the committee chaired by career civil servant and Director of Administration Peter Okwanyo, was formed following the realisation that there was no clear procedure on processing of appointments for vice chancellors, principals and their deputies.
“The (Tenure Review) committee meets regularly to review proposals and gives recommendations to the Principal Secretary and Cabinet Secretary thus facilitating appointments or recommendations for appointments to the President in the case of public university chancellor positions,” the document says.
The document states that the 13-member team will be meeting regularly to process proposals.
These are a raft of changes that Amina and Ntiba initiated since they were appointed to the ministry in January.
The PS has, however, moved back to his Fisheries office while his place has been taken up by Prof Collette Suda who only moved from the position in January.
According to the document, the Ministry will build a database of candidates to be appointed to university councils and chancellorship. Already, the ministry advertised for the positions of council chairmen and members.
It means once terms of chairmen or councils of any university have elapsed, the Ministry will only need to turn to its databank to appoint members to the respective institution.
Additionally, Amina plans to discontinue the practice of appointing all council members of universities at the same time, instead adopting a phased approach to ensure that terms of the officials end at various periods to maintain quorum to run the affairs of the institutions.
Such a move will help pre-empt crises like the one at the University of Nairobi where delayed appointment of council members has derailed the institution’s business for more than one year.
Under the new rules, people who are actively teaching in universities and working in research organisations will not be appointed into universities and college councils.
The move, the report says, was taken after the ministry detected serious cases of conflict of interest arising from council members who were also staff at some of the universities and colleges.
“In one of the universities, the chancellor and chairman (of the council) are active members of academic staff in another university and a conflict has arisen on the appointment of a new vice chancellor causing anxiety in the whole university community,” says the report.
It adds: “Intelligence reports indicate that the chancellor is organising students to protest against appointment of candidates as VCs arising out of interviews conducted by the council.”
The document speaks of the ministry’s quest to address concerns of the 600,000 in all the public universities with the establishment of a directorate of student affairs to deal with issues.
Moved the function
“It (directorate) will address the myriad challenges facing them which only come to the fore during strikes,” the report says.
The document says the directorate would continuously work with universities and help students to understand their roles as leaders and citizens instead of them coming to the ministry when things are beyond control.
The CS has also moved the function of appointment of education attaches from the State Department for Early Learning and Basic Education to University Education. This follows the realisation that the attaches performed roles related to higher education.
She further restructured the representation of the PS for University Education to the councils by appointing officials from other state departments to the dockets.
Under the arrangement, all principal secretaries were appointed to various councils in four major universities.
