The ministry of education has called for a crisis meeting after it emerged that more than 10,000 students who enrolled in bachelor’s degree courses in 26 universities risk getting “worthless” certificates because the programmes are being offered illegally.
This was according to a report by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service, the Commission for University Education (CUE) which said that it was yet to approved the courses and they were therefore invalid.
The courses include bachelor of arts in geography, political science, community development, development and policy studies and counselling psychology.
Other unauthorised arts courses are economics, Kiswahili, international relations, public administration and governance, and peace education.
Questionable science courses include applied statistics with computing, actuarial science, botany, informatics and natural resource management. Others are management and information, human nutrition and dietetics, public health, and biochemistry.
Top Ministry of Education officials yesterday held crisis meetings to resolve the controversy over unapproved courses in universities.The Standard established that the Commission for University Education (CUE) – which approves all academic programmes – was at pains to explain why it rejected more than 130 programmes that has caused panic.It is understood that CUE officials sought to explain the mess in a morning meeting, chaired by Higher Education Principal Secretary Collette Suda at Jogoo House.
After the highly-charged meeting, commission chairperson Chacha Nyaigoti held a second crisis meeting at his office.
A scheduled press conference called by CUE to clarify the fate of the courses was cancelled at the last minute, pointing at the magnitude of the crisis.“We have had a board meeting and proceedings are still being prepared. I will engage you after confirming the resolutions,” said Prof Chacha at the commission’s boardroom.He said the proper document CUE intended to issue to the Press was not ready, prompting cancellation of the press briefing.
“We will engage you in the course of time. Just be on standby. We have an unfinished business that we need to clarify formally and in a nutshell, this means our press conference as earlier planned is not taking place,” said Chacha.Commission Chief Executive Officer Mwendwa Ntarangwi was present at the boardroom.Sources at CUE, however, told The Standard that Prof Suda was upset with the manner universities have been set against students and parents through the media.
It emerged that a communication lapse on the commission’s side led to confusion and panic among students and universities.
Sources revealed that most of the unapproved programmes were courses inherited from mother universities by constituent colleges.Finer details show that the mother colleges ought to have submitted minutes of Senate’s approval of transfer of the programmes to the constituent colleges. This did not happen in most of the cases, according to reports.