Vice Chancellors now claim public universities in Kenya will not survive if they do not hike school fees three times as earlier proposed.
Despite the threats, the university administrators have however remained firm on their proposal to triple the fees saying running public universities has become difficult due to lack of sufficient resources.
According to the VCs, the government provides only Ksh.36 billion which they say is just half of what universities need.
“The cost of everything has gone up. If we’re going to run universities in a way that would make them competitive, we need to ensure that they are properly funded,” said Prof. Francis Aduol, the Chairman of the Vice Chancellor’s Committee.
“We can no longer work with the parameters of 1989 to run universities in 2019.”
This comes even after students threatened to strike and Members of Parliament (MPs) led by ‘comrades leader’ Babu Owino threatened to move to court to block the increment.
In defending the proposal, Prof. Aduol further argued that the government has an option of covering the proposed fees in totality if the students and parents were to be laid off the burden of digging deeper into their pockets.
University students are already feeling the heat with lecturers reportedly abandoning lecture halls and, in some instances, conducting sessions halfheartedly.
The newly-proposed fee structure, if approved, will see students pay an average of Ksh.48,000 per semester.
It, however, remains to be seen how the Ministry of Education will cross this bridge under a new Cabinet Secretary.