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Education Cabinet Secretary, Ezekiel Machogu has said the Government will not protect Vice Chancellors accused of misappropriation of public funds

Machogu directed Vice Chancellors to ensure they have working internal control mechanisms for better financial management of the institutions.

He said public universities should have systems with qualified and competent personnel saying lack of internal control mechanisms in the institution will lead to failure.

“We have very weak controls in universities, in some there are no systems. Others prefer it that way because it will be an opportunity to get funds the way they want but once you set it that way, you have opened for all other people, who might even take more advantage than you,” said the CS.

He made the remarks in Mombasa during the universities’ leadership workshop, where he urged Vice Chancellors to be responsible when making financial decisions to ensure prudent use of resources.

He challenged public universities to ensure value for money for the huge expenditure on university education saying that the Government is set to spend Sh907.5 billion on university education this year.

If well utilised, he said the monies should go a long way in turning around the fortunes of universities.

Ivory tower

The CS said that it is high time that universities come out of the ivory tower and begin to fully function as incubators for new ideas to aid in community social and economic development through research, innovation and capacity building.

He noted that the institutions of higher learning are the society’s foundation for dealing with immediate and long-term needs, even as he stated that the Government is determined to promote research and innovation in the country and has allocated Sh749 million in the 2023/2024 Financial Year budget to research, science, technology and innovation.

“For a number of years now, our universities have experienced many governance and financial issues that require your urgent attention. As I speak now, the latest information is that universities have sunk to a deeper financial crisis that has seen pending bills pile up from Sh60.1 billion in the last financial year to the current Sh77.7 billion,” he stated.

Negative trend

The CS also stated there has been claims that some of the Vice Chancellors have been prefects of the negative trend of promoting negative ethnicity in universities instead of promoting them as national institutions.

In some of the cases, there has been over-recruitment of nonessential staff at the expense of critical teaching staff leading to unsustainable wage bills in the universities.

“Even worse, we have experienced cases where some universities have failed to ensure quality teaching and research, with some of them duplicating degree programmes, and engaging in setting up of unviable campuses,” he regretted.

The CS stated that the hard part of transforming institutions of higher learning into world class universities has started, saying the public and government demands in terms of quality teaching, learning and research are going to be many.

Some of these weaknesses in leadership, he stated, have been the reason the institutions are far from attaining a world-class status.

He said most universities have for long failed to make it to the top charts of world rankings, mainly because of weak systems put in place by the management of the local higher institutions of learning.

The CS said the training held in Mombasa was part of enabling Vice Chancellors realise the success expected of universities in the arena of research and innovation, teaching, community support and partnerships.

“We cannot continue to condone the situation where our local universities remain at the tail end of international rankings. There is a compelling need for our universities to sit on the international charts and give other world-class universities a run for their money,” he said.

Adding: “We must rival Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, University College London and Imperial College London among other most reputable world-class universities. As Vice Chancellors, you have the key to helping our local universities to turn the corner and earn the international respect.”

He challenged Vice Chancellors to steer the country in the quest for excellence in the advancement of human knowledge and provide the best training for future scholars.