Lecturers's Strike and the
Lessons from Makerere
The strike by Kenya's public university lecturers, which enters its second week today, illustrates how higher education has been mishandled in the past two decades. In terms of statistics, the number of universities has increased significantly, from one in 1984 to the current six. Similarly, enrolment has shot up from 9,000 in 1984 to 52,000 to date, excluding parallel degree programmes.
Quality-wise, this growth has not been matched. Infrastructure has not been expanded, lecturers are in short supply and courses have not changed to reflect emerging trends globally. The strike, the second in a decade, is therefore as much a protest against a poorly managed higher education system as it is about poor salaries.
In the region, Kenya again leads in numbers. While the country had six public universities with about 50,000 students in 2000, Tanzania only had two - Dar es Salaam and Sokoine - with a combined enrolment of 9,054.
But in terms of transformation, Tanzania's and Uganda's universities have undergone more changes than Kenya's. Take Makerere, which was on the brink of collapse in the 1980s following years of systematic destruction of Uganda's economy and infrastructure. Beginning 1992, the university was set on a clear road to reform, with President Yoweri Museveni relinquishing his chancellorship and a private individual being appointed to that position.
Running its own affairs, Makerere was able within seven years to establish a strong financial base and reduce its expenditure by significant margins. In a study, Makerere University in Transition 1993-2000, Prof Nakanyike Musisi and Dr Nansozi Muwanga say: "By 1999, over 60 per cent of its capital budget came from other than government sources."
The university expanded its student enrolment through admission of more fee-paying students, thus opening opportunities for higher education to many more deserving people and increasing its revenue base. By 1999, the bulk of students - 80 per cent - were paying their own fees, unlike in the past, when all depended on government scholarships.
Makerere is now in a position to pay its lectures a fairly decent salary by regional standards. A lecturer now gets a basic salary of $500 (Ksh38,000) while a professor gets $722 (Ksh54,872), in addition to allowances like housing, transport and medical. The lecturers also get what are called top-up allowances derived from the consultancies that they do at the university. Together with the top-up allowance, a lecturer is sure of getting at least $1,060 (Ksh80,560) and a professor $1,600 (Ksh121,600). It is instructive to note that the university has set up a system where lecturers write proposals and bid for consultancies, which they execute using the institution's facilities. The lecturers are also paid separately for teaching evening classes, which, like in Kenya, have become popular with working people.
The salaries at Makerere, though not substantial compared with those offered by universities in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Rwanda, are still better than in Kenya. A Kenyan tutorial fellow gets about $200 (Ksh15,000) and a house allowance of $223 (Ksh17,000) while a professor gets $420 (Ksh32,000) and a housing allowance of $526 (Ksh40,000). In addition, they have a medical cover operated by the university, but the institutions are no longer able to pay bills at the hospitals. Worse, university clinics are doing badly due to lack of medical supplies.
Again, universities in the region have been running programmes for staff development, especially giving the lecturers scholarships to go for higher training. At both Makerere and Dar es Salaam, for instance, there is a provision that a percentage of revenue generated from consultancies be used for staff training. The University of Dar es Salaam also has also entered into agreements with donors like the Netherlands and Sweden. The arrangement has seen many lecturers pursue doctorate degree programmes and helped improve the quality of teaching.
In contrast, Kenya universities have been slow in developing PhDs. In fact, there are faculties without a single PhD. Moreover, unlike in Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda where universities are involved in national development programmes like road construction or research on particular issues, Kenya's universities are left out of the government's activities - perhaps reflecting an historically icy relationship, where the universities are seen as hotbeds of radical politics best kept at a distance from the mainstream of national planning.
Cumulatively, the situation obtaining in Kenya's universities is not conducive to academic excellence. In a paper published in 1990, Prof M.S. Mukras categorically stated that most lecturers who had chosen to stay on and work in Kenya instead of seeking greener pastures abroad had done so purely because of patriotism.
Thirteen years later, not much has changed. Salaries are still low and lecturers have become poorer than before despite the fact that the government gave substantial housing allowances to all public sectors, which benefited the academicians, too. So, as the Education Minister Prof George Saitoti promised last Friday, when finally the government gets around to giving lecturers a pay rise, it should be far above what other universities in the region offer.
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David Aduda is Education Editor of the Daily Nation.
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