STRATEGIES TO ADDRESS THE SHORTAGE OF TEACHING STAFF IN OUR UNIVERSITIES

For the last 10 years, this country has made significant gains in the education sector especially within the basic education sub sectors with free primary and subsidized high school education programs. These programs have led to a tremendous increase in the enrollment of students in primary and secondary schools resulting in the proportional increase in the demand for chances at college and university education in the country. For this reason, the government recently increased the number of public universities from 7 to 22 in preparation for a grandiose plan to build the required human capacity required to drive national socio-economic development. Though a remarkable initiative worthy of commendation, the shortage of of qualified lecturers and the quality of university education that our universities are offering need to be handled carefully as a matter of priority. The Public Universities Institutional Audits released by the Commission for University Education recently made public worrying trends within the sector with the revelation that our universities have only a few lecturers with doctorate degrees and that most teaching is done by people with master’s degree qualification. Already, the rush by new universities to tap into existing qualified manpower pool that exist in the country is already sending alarms that things may not be well for old universities and research institutes who hold  a significant  pool of quality scholars and scientists. If left unchecked, this will further compromise many issues not only in our universities but the entire research sector.

How then do we address this important national challenge? As I have said in many forums, our university administrative systems must start to think of innovative mechanisms that will ensure that they develop and retain quality human manpower if they have to offer quality training. Allow me to suggest a few short and long term strategies that could alleviate the problem of low PhD-qualified lecturers.

In the short term, universities will need to develop crush programs that will ensure they attract and retain qualified manpower for teaching. Such programs may involve offers of lucrative part time positions to those within the public and private sectors with at least PhD level training or initiating to offer their services as ‘professors or researchers in practice’ transferring their long years experiences in public and private service as lecturers. Universities also need to introduce competitive sabbatical programs for Kenyans and other scholars within the country and in the Diaspora who may be willing to come to Kenyan universities for short periods of 1 semester to teach. More importantly, the universities must ring fence their best, offer them Masters and PhD scholarship to build their own teaching pool. Opening up opportunities for those who have retired from service but who may still be willing to serve on contract could also alleviate the biting shortage of qualified teaching staff in our universities.

Long term strategies to address lack of adequate university teaching staff may involve establishing centers of excellence and research chairs in areas in which there are significant gaps. The centre of excellence should be modeled in ways that will nurture talents at PhD and postdoctoral level in all disciplines. Research chairs will require that the universities set aside a significant amount of research fund that distinguished scientist and scholars can use to conduct research but also offer postgraduate mentorship thereby helping build required quality human resource capacity in the university. In developing such a model, the private sector needs to be looped in to create synergy between the university and the labor market. Involvement of the private sector could also be extended to areas of curriculum development, teaching positions and research partnerships. Even as universities undertake all these initiatives, they must make sure that lecturers are imparted with relevant pedagogical skills through continuous in service training and that quality and relevance of training is not compromised.

Our universities must adopt a vibrant collaborations and linkages model through networks with other Universities in the region and the rest of the world. This will open opportunities for visiting professors to come to our local universities through academic staff exchange programs and also offer our lecturers opportunities to teach in foreign universities. This will not only allow for knowledge exchange and diffusion but will provide a good platform for technology transfer and adoption of best practices that exist in other institutions in the world. Overall, the Universities must take advantage of opportunities of capacity building offered through joint collaborations between Kenya- South Africa, National Commission for Science and Technology and Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Kenya DAAD Scholarship programme for doctorate training, Pan Africa University and other regional capacity building opportunities to increase the number of Kenyan doctorates. This must be well coordinated from the University who should encourage their staff.

It must however be made clear that these programs will require huge resources and strong management and leadership skills. The universities must address issues of working conditions such as better remunerations, clear career growth paths and scholarships among other incentives. It is only through such measures that our universities will minimize challenges of brain drain and moonlighting currently rampant in our universities. Such programs must be clearly stipulated to reduce management-staff problems that are the source of university strife among the teaching staff and university administration. Achievement of the desired results will therefore call for strong leadership and administrative skills be hinged on right policies. Lastly, higher education institutions must be strengthened to respond to societal needs and challenges through new academic programmes and, innovative pedagogical methods centered on problem-solving. Thus, they must be well staffed and equipped to impact on the society.