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Academic freedom serves as the lubricant that enable the gears of higher education to work. But a delicate subtle force persists against the academy’s psyche. Across media, forums, social media posts, dinner conversations, and boardrooms in Kenya, we often lambast the quality of our tertiary education institutions.
The term “half-baked graduates” often trends on Twitter. Heaps of blame gets put on universities yet ignores the anemic support and integration by industry, over-regulation by government, and low demand-induced expectations on the sector.
In response, since the days of Jacob Kaimenyi in the education docket, commentators proclaim standardisation as a way to enhance quality. Requiring all courses to use the same textbooks, syllabi, methods, among others. Yet more over-regulation will not solve the sector’s ills. The corruption, bureaucracy, and crowding out of top academic talent under standardisation would spell disaster for our Kenyan higher learning environment by teaching to the lowest common denominator and reduce learning outcomes for students and obliterate academic freedom. We need less convergent thinking and more and more divergent thinking. |
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