Over the past few weeks, Kenyans have been expressing their utmost displeasure with the elevation of middle level colleges to university colleges and condemning it in the strongest possible terms but I beg to differ with them.
Over years, the number of students who have been qualifying to join the university through the Joint Admissions Board has been rising steeply contrary to the expansion of the few public university we have in the country and it is constitutional and moral right for a student who has worked so hard and qualified to join the university to do so. Majority of the students have no means of flying out of the country and take their courses overseas like their rich counterparts and hence these university colleges are a warm welcome to them
It would hurt a parent to have their child stay at home and fail to report to university and they are qualified just because the universities are few and are full. By the way, unlike their rich counterparts, those that go to these universities have no choice but to go where the JAB chooses for them to go out of the four universities they apply to join, but for the rich few, they can pop into any university at any time and I suppose that majority of the those opposing the move are the rich few who have already made public universities full with the self-sponsored students, and so I wonder where they want the poor majority to move to next.
I beg them to understand that even Rome was not built in a day and even those great universities they try to contrast with universities started as less or same as those university colleges and so it’s just a matter of time and they will grow too. After all, I wonder whether they have thought of all the good these university colleges are bringing to the surrounding society in terms of infrastructure development, job creation as they try to expand and get more staff, and also since they are spread all over the counties, they are bringing about a balanced economic development all over the country.
They act as a catalyst to those students from nearby schools who have never set foot in campus and hence they feel motivated and challenged to work harder and join there friends in the campus and they get to interact with them too. The university colleges do not attract people from only nearby area only and hence they provide a rich ground for social cultural exchange and hence reducing negative ethnicity and promoting positive tribalism. On many occasions some of these university colleges share the syllabus with the main university’s which are taught by the same lecturers and hence the difference in studies are minimal. After all, they have few number of students who are easy to handle than some of the main universities where you find a class with over 1200 students. So I beg Kenyans to take improvements as this on a positive scale and exercise patience as the colleges’ grow. They should also stop corrupt practices which slows down the growth of economy which hinders growth of these university colleges.
