Highly respected US based law scholar professor Makau Mutua has stated that the damage done by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology’s 118 phony PhDs is incalculable.
JKUAT’s 33rd graduation created an uproar after they awarded 118 PhD’s that shocked many as the case is rarely witnessed.
Mutua has illustrated that Kenyans applying for post-graduate programs abroad will face heavy scepticism. The move he insists brings into disrepute Kenya’s entire educational system and wipes out it’s credibility.
The Harvard graduate further expressed how the action is a terrible burden on the youth.
The damage done by JKUAT’s 118 likely phony PhDs is incalculable. Kenyans applying for post-graduate programs abroad will face heavy skepticism. This brings into disrepute Kenya’s entire educational system and wipes out its credibility. It’s a terrible burden on the youth.
— Prof Makau Mutua (@makaumutua) June 27, 2019
Earlier on Makau lauded the Commission for University Education (CUE) over plans to investigate doctorate degrees recently issued by the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).
In a tweet on Wednesday, Mutua asked the CUE to audit all other universities so that cases of fraud are cut off from Kenyan universities.
“Thanks to CUE for probing the highly questionable 118 JKUAT PhDs. Don’t stop there. Audit all universities for FRAUD to restore academic standards,” he said.
Meanwhile the Education ministry has given universities two weeks to prepare a list of the institutions to be merged and those to be shut down.
At a meeting with vice-chancellors and finance officers of the 31 chartered public universities and seven university colleges, Education Secretary George Magoha asked the administrators to lay ground for the drastic measures.
The closure of the yet to be named universities is meant to improve the quality of education.
Magoha said the government wants higher institutions of learning to be respected globally. This can only be done by looking at the universities, what they offer and whether it is a priority.
“We want to make sure in the next 10 to 20 years we will have universities that are determined to produce the demands of a changing world,” he said on Tuesday when he opened a forum on terrorism for all universities’ registrars organised by the National Counter Terrorism Centre at Sawela Lodge in Naivasha.