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President William Ruto’s directive last year that the government will re-charter the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) has left confusion in the education sector with the university’s management calling for clarity.

 When President Dr William Ruto paid a visit to the Technical University of Kenya(TU-K) on December 8, 2022, the Head of State said the Government would  re-charter the institution to meet its core mandate of being a polytechnic university adding that the charter that the institution holds at the moment does not help it to play its role. 

“This institution was functionally elevated from a national polytechnic to a technical university. The rationale of this strategy was to enhance the institution’s traditional strength in technical and vocational education and training by investing it in a strong research, and development innovation capacity underpinned by a robust academic infrastructure. Our young people deserve opportunities to pursue further education and training in a diploma before they proceed to Bachelor’s degree level,” he stated. The order by the President has raised questions on whether TU-K will go back to the polytechnic status.

 The vice-chancellor, Prof Francis Aduol now says they have raised concerns with the Ministry of Education around the proper interpretation of the charter so that it could match the capitation that was channelled to TU-K. “We were named a technical university but we were not chartered under the correct section of the Universities Act 2012 and that is all we have been asking for. We were chartered under section 19 which is a section for grant of charter to a traditional university that teaches everything. We need to be chartered under the correct section so that the university can be given the potency and the resources for a true technical university,” he says.

 Prof Aduol says that the declaration made by the President was with respect to the University Act section 25 which is the “Declaration of Technical Universities” and states, “The President may, on the recommendation of the Cabinet Secretary, declare an institution to be a technical university subject to such conditions, standards and guidelines as may be specified by the Commission.

Polytechnic status

 Prof Aduol, who was a member of the team that drafted the Universities Act, says they were seeking to protect the use of the declaration for public institutions to technical universities. So, they agreed that national polytechnics are the ones that were going to be chartered as technical universities. At that moment, they were Kenya Polytechnic (now TU-K) and Mombasa Polytechnic now known as Technical University of Mombasa (TUM).  “When the time came to do the chartering, we said that these two proposed institutions would not be chartered as technical universities because the law provided for national polytechnic yet they had already become university colleges- Kenya Polytechnic University College was a constituent College of the University of Nairobi while Mombasa Polytechnic University College was a constituent College of JKUAT.  Under the circumstances, we were only left with one option of getting chartered under section 19 which is the Act for grant of charter for a traditional university. Therefore, we were given the permission to have the name of “technical university” but we are not by the law a technical university until the law is amended then shall we be,” he explains.

 Prof Aduol disclosed that the amendment process of the Universities Act went well in the last Parliament but the entire Bill was rejected in 2022 not because of the Section 19 but other parts that the legislature did not like. He points out the reasons why TU-K needs to be chartered under Section 25. “Getting chartered as a technical university comes with some more benefits to the university including the funding from the Ministry as we offer expensive courses so in a way getting chartered under Section 19 has worked against us as we are funded as an ordinary university. We hope this will be dealt with as soon as possible.”

Technical university

 The VC argues that as a technical university, students from TVET and technical training institutes (TTIs) that are admitted through Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), still need to be funded by the Government when they come to pursue a degree at TU-K but since the institution still works as an ordinary university, they are not funded hence the students are forced to be self-sponsored. “We admit regular diploma students directly from high school through KUCCPS and also diploma graduates from TTI and TVET who have passed well and want to pursue degree programmes but they finance themselves since we are not allocated funds for diploma courses as the Ministry says that they don’t fund diploma courses in universities.”

 As many are worried about the proposed re-chartering being a threat to the humanity and social sciences courses in the technical universities, Prof Aduol emphasises that it is not going to affect these courses in any way as he says that a university cannot teach technical and vocational disciplines without some humanities and social sciences.