The professor's curse: How policies punish dons for reading too much

The tragedy of becoming a professor is that it takes almost an entire lifetime merely to qualify for the title. [Courtesy]

There comes a point when even Village Wisdom, where truth walks barefoot, stops walking, sits under the old mugumo tree, scratches its grey beard and asks a dangerous question: When did reading too much become a punishable offence?

That question returned with force after the recent court decision upholding the retirement age of professors at seventy.

At first glance, seventy sounds generous. To politicians, it sounds ancient. To footballers, impossible. But to a professor, seventy is often the age when the mind has finally finished introducing itself.

The tragedy of becoming a professor is that it takes almost an entire lifetime merely to qualify for the title.

An ordinary graduate may join the university at twenty-five. Then comes Tutorial Fellow. Years later, Assistant Lecturer. Then Lecturer. Senior Lecturer. Associate Professor.

Finally, after decades of examinations, sleepless nights, journal reviewers who reject your paper because they dislike the font size, conferences where your luggage reaches before you do, endless supervision of postgraduate students, external examinations, research grants, publications and promotions that move slower than a Nairobi traffic jam during heavy rain! you finally become a full Professor.

By then, your hair has surrendered. Your eyesight has negotiated peace with spectacles. Your knees have started quoting the weather forecast before the meteorological department.

Then, just as you begin enjoying the fruit of intellectual suffering, someone politely hands you retirement forms. Village Wisdom shakes its head. It is like forcing a mango tree out of the orchard the very season it begins producing the sweetest fruit. Or slaughtering the cow immediately after it starts giving the richest milk.

Who exactly celebrates such efficiency?

Perhaps nowhere else is patience punished more thoroughly than in academia. To become a professor is not like becoming famous on TikTok. Nobody becomes Professor because one video went viral. There are no shortcuts. No filters. No ring lights. Only libraries. Thousands of books. Thousands more articles. Research that consumes weekends. Students who submit dissertations written in languages even artificial intelligence refuses to recognise. Peer reviewers who appear to have been trained by the Department of Human Discouragement.

And after surviving all that, the reward is simple: "Congratulations, Professor. Now kindly prepare to leave." Surely even irony deserves limits. The painful contradiction becomes clearer when one observes the treatment of other public offices. Judges constitutionally retire at seventy. Nobody questions whether wisdom expires with birthdays. Their accumulated experience is respected because justice requires mature judgement.

Yet universities, the very institutions producing future judges, doctors, engineers, economists and presidents—appear comfortable treating professors as though intellectual usefulness has an expiry date conveniently printed on the national identity card.

Village Wisdom finds this arithmetic difficult. The nation proudly addresses leaders as Doctor. Professor. Engineer.

Yet the same nation behaves as though producing those titles is an administrative inconvenience.

We celebrate education in speeches. We suffocate it in policy. We praise scholarship during graduations. Then quietly dismantle the very institutions producing scholars. One cannot ignore the broader pattern.

Universities have become experimental laboratories for political trial and error. Funding models arrive with presidential enthusiasm and disappear with equal speed. One administration finances universities this way. Another invents a different formula. Then comes "money follows the student." Tomorrow it becomes another attractive slogan.

Education has become political ping-pong. Students bounce. Lecturers absorb the impact. Universities survive on hope. Meanwhile, politicians continue launching universities with remarkable generosity. Every campaign season produces another promise. Another constituent university. Another campus. Sometimes one suspects universities are now being established with greater speed than cattle dips.

Instead of strengthening existing institutions into globally competitive centres of excellence, we multiply campuses carrying politically convenient names while starving those already standing.

Even university placement has not escaped political shadows. Kenyans still remember periods when allocation patterns raised uncomfortable questions about whether academic planning was being quietly replaced by political geography.

Education should be guided by research. Not regional excitement. Not campaign enthusiasm. Not electoral arithmetic.

Yet the greatest casualty remains scholarship itself. The professor is not merely an employee. A professor is institutional memory. Living archives. Walking libraries.

Mentors whose greatest contribution is often impossible to measure using payroll software. One distinguished professor can inspire generations. One careless policy can discourage an entire generation from pursuing academic excellence. Young lecturers are watching. They calculate the years ahead. Doctorate. Research. Promotion. Publication. Conference. Supervision. Then retirement arrives almost immediately after reaching the summit. The mountain begins looking less attractive.

Village Wisdom therefore asks another uncomfortable question. If Kenya genuinely desires a knowledge economy, why make the highest academic achievement appear like a race against the retirement clock?

Perhaps professors deserve treatment reflecting the extraordinary journey required to become one. Not because they seek privilege. But because knowledge itself deserves honour. Nations that respect scholarship become centres of innovation. Those that treat scholars as ordinary bureaucrats eventually begin importing ideas they once had the capacity to produce. This debate is therefore larger than retirement. It is about national priorities. It is about whether Kenya values those who spend entire lifetimes reading so future generations need not repeat yesterday's mistakes.

Village Wisdom has watched farmers preserve the oldest seed because it produces the strongest harvest. It has watched communities consult the oldest elders before difficult decisions. It therefore struggles to understand why the university, of all places, should hurry to empty its deepest wells of wisdom.

Let professors teach while strength, health and intellect permit. Let them mentor. Let them write. Let them inspire.

And when, finally, nature not bureaucracy! calls them to rest, let universities honour them as national treasures whose footprints remain permanently engraved on the paths of learning.

For a nation that punishes those who read too much should never complain when it is eventually governed by those who read too little.