MPs seek audit on State’s funds to private varsities

Legislators  yesterday directed the Auditor General to carry out a special audit of all funds sent to 31 private universities that receive g Exchequer funding.

The Public Investments Committee on Governance and Education led by the chairperson and Bumula MP Jack Wamboka, regretted that public universities were going down while the private universities were thriving.

While ordering the audit to be done, Wamboka regretted that private campuses have in the last four financial years received grants worth Sh 8.7billion from the government at the expense of public universities.

Among the top beneficiaries include Mount Kenya University Sh552.3 million for 12,479 students, Kabarak University Sh357.9 million for 7715 students, Catholic university of East Africa Sh196.9 million for 4685 students, Kenya College of Accountancy University Sh223.9 billion for 5,142 students, university of Eastern African Baraton Sh183 billion for 4222 students and Zetech University Sh115.4 million for 2836 students.

“We have requested the Auditor General to do a special audit of funds sent to private universities as capitation.  We also need to find out whether it is necessary for us to continue sponsoring students to private universities,” he said.

While meeting various universities’ Vice Chancellors, Wamboka said that the committee is interested to know how funds sent to universities are being utilised.

“Just because someone was mischievous in law to remove the word public, Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) is the one that is deciding where to take students. I believe that we must stop funding private universities especially now that public universities have capacity to take in students,” he said.

Serious funding issues

Narok County Woman Representative Rebecca Tonkei said that the issue of university funding is serious and needs to be looked at.

“If there is a law that needs to be changed this needs to be done so that money can start following the students so that the huge funding that is going to universities just because they are regarded as huge entities is stopped,” she said.

Kiminini MP Kakai Bisau said MPs should come up with legislative policy to end state funding in private universities.

Double standards

He regretted that double standards were being used at the national level in terms of state funding in the private sector.

“At the CDF level we cannot fund you in a private school, why are we having a different policy in universities,” Bisau said.

The audit comes hardly a month after MPs approved a report of the Budget and Appropriation Committee on the 2023-24 Budget Policy Statement, which spells out priority expenditures for the government, and directed the KUCCPS to stop placing government sponsored students to private universities.

Reads the report: “That, in the next cycle of placements (2023), the state department for higher education and research, through the Kenya Universities and colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), should not place new government sponsored students in private universities.”

The move comes at a time when the government is struggling to fund public universities that are choked with debts amounting to over Sh56.1 billion

According to the Universities Fund, most public universities are on the verge of collapsing due to indebtedness and inability to pay statutory deductions, such as Pay as You Earn taxes, Sacco and bank loan repayments and remittances to NHIF and NSSF for health insurance and retirement benefits respectively.

The accumulated debt also includes payments for part-time lecturers and contractors among others. Universities owe contractors Sh1.4 billion, part-time lecturers Sh4.5 billion, suppliers Sh4.8 billion, and Sacco’s Sh4.1 billion.

Meanwhile Technical University of Kenya VC Francis Aduol who was among the university heads that had appeared before the committee, proposed a change of funding that will see the government fund students instead of universities as it is currently happening

Aduol explained that if the proposal is taken into consideration then the issue of funding government sponsored students in private universities will be addressed.

“As a vice chancellor why should the government give TUK Sh1.8 billion, what am I supposed to do with it, I am supposed to educate. Why can’t the government give students that money,” Aduol paused.

Oduol told the committee that public universities should not be receiving recurrent expenditure as this should be pegged on the number of students each university is receiving.