Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology is in the grip of a public relations debacle that has the potential of hurting Kenya’s entire higher education sector.
On June 21, the university awarded 118 doctorate degrees, provoking outrage not just because of the sheer number of the graduates, but the fact that most of them were in business and human resources programmes that are hardly the institution’s forte.
The furore triggered investigations by the regulator, the Commission for University Education, which last week ordered a review of all the degrees, citing serious anomalies in the academic processes leading to the award and the suitability of some of the students to undertake doctorate courses.
It is hard to imagine more appalling news regarding a university, especially an old and reputable one such as JKUAT, than to have the quality of its degrees questioned.
It basically means the university has diverted from its mandate of creating knowledge, promoting scholarship and innovation.
Doctorate degrees are based on robust research, the findings of which should contribute to a body of knowledge by filling in gaps in scientific literature and thereby helping solve a problem in society.
A doctorate programme is exacting, aggressive, unremittingly draining and expensive and that is why it takes at least three years to complete.
It is PhD holders who end up teaching in the very same universities or are entrusted with senior positions in both public and private sectors where higher knowledge is required.
This is why the position that JKUAT finds itself in is both shocking and mortifying.
The commission was categorical that the university flouted supervision rules by having some professors guide more than three students, contrary to the rules.
It also pointed out that some of its satellite campuses, where some of the students were based, do not have professors and PhD holders to supervise them and that some of the learners did not have the credentials to enrol for the programmes.
The commission did well to investigate the anomalies quickly and for making its findings public. But it must also be vigilant to check out what happens in universities.
Moreover, the order to JKUAT to review the degrees and stop offering doctorate programmes in campuses is too soft.
The university management and the professors found to have breached the sacrosanct academic rules must be penalised.
Their actions have blemished the reputation of the university and the country’s higher education sector.
The pawns in this horrible game are the graduates who had no way of knowing if the university was adhering to the supervision rules.
We demand that sterner action be taken against the university and that the commission broadens its investigations to other universities and other degree programmes.
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