I had just received the potentially depressing news that I had been appointed head of department. It was too late to turn back.

For many, undergraduate life is a moment of experiment, savouring a newfound liberty, and a time to explore and nudge at the limits.

The notion that the quantity of time spent in school translates to quality teaching and learning is wrong

Brutal set-up Universities mint billions from part-timers who have to painfully wait an eternity before they’re paid

The university bureaucracy is content with rigid and bureaucratic procedures comprised of shuffling and pushing paperwork.

The occasion of the 30th anniversary of the founding of Moi University, former President Moi was the chief guest.

Beyond Ruto’s impulsive craving to be President, I find it difficult to point one thing to warrant an entire institute in Makerere be named after him

Change Merger will be akin to taking a painful but mandatory pill, university bosses to be casualties

Asking universities to “make money” is losing sight of the essence of higher learning.

The use of messianic terms to describe actions of the CS reflected a general poverty of leadership

In contrast, there appears a trend where individuals are merely getting a PhD -- and not earning one

Many African universities are short of teachers and researchers with doctoral and post-doctoral qualifications and expertise.

For as long as the State tinkers with university appointments and persist in ethnicising the academe, it must be ready to pick up the bill.

Despite immense challenges, Moi fashioned one of Africa’s most important education revolution.

A proper journalism school can only afford one broad based media and journalism bachelor’s degree.

Africa, specifically sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for 13.5 per cent of the global population but less than one per cent of global research output

There is a near obsession among local universities that PhDs must contain taught, examinable coursework.

For a Kenyan university to be without an ISO certification is analogous to the Kenyan household that dares skip mandatory chapati meal on Christmas

These schools are simply expressing what happens in the wider society where violence is idolised and rewarded

Private varsities are no better than public ones as the rot afflicting institutions of higher learning gets worse by the day.

Universities are back to the dark old days when politics shaped patterns of student access, curriculum content and teaching methods.

Kenya’s institutions of higher learning are in desperate need of a saviour

Kenya can learn a lot from her peers in Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana and South Africa, where university education is what it is meant to be.

If the ongoing strike, the third in 12 months, continues, it will be the longest in recent history

More than 40 days after it began, the lecturers’ strike is showing no sign of petering out. The matter is being treated with remarkable nonchalance.

The programmes are alluring, trendy, both sexy and sexualised, thin in content and possessing the barest of ‘nutritive’ dividends.

Government holds the key to solving crisis in public universities, and it is all about putting pen to paper

From the start, the Government got it all wrong, choosing to ignore pressing and urgent issues over a luxurious one

Problems facing Kenya’s public universities begin with the politicisation of university councils and...

Sometime back, the Commission for University Education (CUE) developed the troubling habit of issuing ‘headline...

For two years now, a Tsunami has swept through Kenya’s examination system.

The government must move from providing education as a political freebie, to providing it as a basic right

I am hopeful that among our intellectuals in the universities, a remnant still holds out against the seduction of prejudice, loot and narrow mindedness.

There’s something common with scholars who complete their graduate studies abroad. In their last year, after gruelling years in western universities, most want to return home.

The crises facing university education is not just located in the continued cash crunch plaguing them, neither is it confined to the unplanned universities expansion, or the persistent tribalisation and politicisation of universities.

We have a problem. On Sunday evening, a distinguished academic was stopped by immigration officials at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

It was in Arusha, Tanzania. The affable Nigerian scholar, Dr Cyril Obi, a man who has made a successful career at running international research centres focused on Africa, warned us, “Do not allow yourselves to be appointed departmental heads or chairs of departments.” He looked down at his coffee mug, lifted it up to his mouth, and just before he took the final swig, looked up again and with a tone of finality, announced, “If you do, you risk being appointed to academic oblivion.” The year was 2014. It was barely 11 months after I had completed my doctorate studies. In my mind, I had all these lofty ideas about developing and sustaining a research profile. I also had plans to turn my doctorate into a book and proceed onto a fresh search for a new research project on local media history. I am convinced the area is in desperate need of research.

By the time this article is published, Kenyans will have known the outcome of the Supreme Court process which saw the opposition contest the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta.

Unknown to many, UASU was founded on the principles of social justice, labour democracy and democratic action. Whereas the union was established as a bargaining instrument for its members, it has a broader remit

A day before the election, I went to the supermarket for the usual daily supplies. There was frenzied panic buying as thousands thronged the facility in preparation for what seemed like bomb raids.