The major conversation on public universities, especially revolving around financing and the quality of teaching research has been going on in recent weeks, but now they appear to have an even bigger problem — lack of leadership.

Reports indicate that most of Kenya’s public universities are on the verge of insolvency and require external financial intervention to remain afloat.  A taskforce appointed by President William Ruto had suggested an increase in university fees and increased government funding but the President sent the team back to the drawing board. The proposal is still the subject of heated debate.

This has, in effect, overshadowed the other major challenge in the institutions; that of governance. It’s alarming that 29 universities lack either chancellors or vice-chancellors and some do not have deputy vice-chancellors either. This has created a leadership vacuum, a status that has affected critical decision-making and derailed operations in some of the institutions.

The vacancies arose due to retirement or expiry of contracts of the previous office holders but that they have remained unfilled for so long speaks volumes about succession planning in universities. This inordinate delay in replacing the top managers is unacceptable. Vice-chancellors are the academic and administrative heads of universities. They take overall responsibility for the direction that a university adopts.

Meanwhile, chancellors are the titular heads of the universities and are in charge of conferring degrees and granting diplomas to graduands. In their absence, a chairman of the university council can only hold fort for three months at most, a rule that has consistently been observed in the breach rather than in the observance. This must be addressed at once. That was why the decision by the Public Service Commission to advertise  the jobs is a step in the right direction. However, this must be done in a way that respects regional balance, gender equity and meritocracy, difficult as striking that balance may sound.

There has been in the past, a malevolent, toxic and unreasoned trend of appointing “locals” to run institutions of higher learning, a move that flies in the face of the “universality of knowledge” that the institutions are expected to pursue and uphold. As a result, these skewed appointments have spawned mismanagement and plunder of the institutions, leading to staff unrests. It is unacceptable that institutions that ought to empower young people to embrace diversity and de-ethnicise their minds have become the citadels of tribalism and ineptitude and favouritism.