The endless ping-pong ball scenario of Kenyan university lecturers threatening to go on strike, calling it off, or going ahead to ground studies for weeks or months is not news anymore.
While the dons under the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) have just called off a strike that was expected to start on August 30 over a Sh13 billion collective bargaining agreement (CBA) duel, their colleagues on part-time contracts could be claiming more from their employers.
A number of studies and analysts say the number of part-time lecturers — this breed of dons that moves from one university to another, basically living on the road — is almost 50 percent of the total population of academics that Kenya, like other economies, depend on to turn around fortunes.
Part-time dons tell horror stories of teaching for months and years at public universities without pay while they are expected to buy books, read them, and supervise students who should achieve the elusive goal of “creating jobs”.
Kenya’s number of university students has sharply risen over the years to more than 500,000 according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics that releases the key figures annually in the Economic Survey.
It is only a miracle that the part-time lecturers have not formed unions like their counterparts in other countries to push for recognition, rights and welfare that has forced them to hop ‘in search of pasture and water’. Because of this migratory behaviour the part-timers have been accused of paying little attention to their students because they are always on the road. Question: Can they think well when they are not calm?
Coalescing under a union improving their lot is, however, not guaranteed since the fairly powerful UASU is always threatening to stop working in the push for pay.
Why has Kenya not got it right to treat the well-read dons well? Some of the despised part-time lecturers are respected captains of industry who bring to lecture halls the much needed practice knowledge from their factories and corner offices. It is this kind of mix that is expected to give Kenya jobs and expertise, but the government is yet to find it fit to honour the PhDs, professors, and CEOs who teach undergraduate and postgraduate students in areas like accounting, commerce, engineering, journalism and politics.
While many things warm the heart, nothing compares to money when it comes to motivating talent to deliver. So, here we are seeing people teaching at university, but they are hungry, possibly unkempt, despised and angered for being treated as lesser mortals. It is possible that these lecturers may give their students the short end of the stick without knowing and keep the economy deep down in the murky hole of joblessness, weak intellectualism, corruption, and the perennial half-baking of learners among others.
While enrolment is rising yearly, it is sad that the quality of graduates could be dropping fast because of wan teaching, scratch-the-surface research, half-hearted reading and supervision for ticking the box.
According to the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), the number of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination candidates that qualified for direct university entry rose to more than 142,000 in 2020 against more than 125,000 in the year before.
The growth in university enrolment will only benefit if the students find value through quality teaching that will help the masses to solve basic and complex challenges.
One of the places to start the renewal of lecturer motivation is the supervision of graduate students where some master’s candidates sue instead of thanking universities when they finally graduate. It is possible that poorly remunerated dons find no value in taking students through the nit-picking and rigours of academic research when they know they will not be paid when the candidates pay upwards of Sh60,000 for their project and thesis supervision.
Among the commercial farmers who keep dairy herds for good money and milk, feeding the animals is the standard. They have the feeds in the right proportions, including salt licks that stimulate milk.
But this is not the case for dons, the crème de la crème of the society, who are supposed to stimulate economic growth when they burn the midnight oil looking for new ideas to produce inimitable and dependable graduates who not only work for blue-chip companies, but can turn around the ailing ones while also struggling with rare innovation models to start own businesses and practice.
Somebody must advise the Government of Kenya that the low-hanging fruit in kick-starting the economy is to mind about the welfare of the university teachers, starting with predictable pay and other benefits before putting them on admirable pay scales.
How will the dons think on behalf of the masses if they don’t have enough to eat to stimulate their brains? The policy makers must find value in calming the dons to think and work.
While in the 12th Century scholars depended on charity to survive and kept food in hoods of their gowns as they conducted public lectures, the ground moved. One of the warnings is that charity dried up in the era of capitalism.
