Corporate News
Technical University of Mombasa students leave for home following unrest
over accreditation of engineering courses in September last year. PHOTO
| FILE
By HERBLING DAVID, hdavid@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- The Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) identifies qualification of lecturers and shortage of facilities as the weak points.
Shocking revelations have emerged about the poor
state of teaching in public universities where a combination of staff
incompetence and professional laxity is taking its toll on the quality
of learning.
Kakamega-based Masinde Muliro University of Science and
Technology tops the list of institutions where incessant laxity led to
gross management decisions that are now costing its graduates the very
qualifications they went to pursue in the college.
Masinde Muliro hired a home science graduate to
teach public health engineering — one of the degree courses that the
Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) has refused to recognise.
The institution also hired seven ‘quacks’ masquerading as engineers to work as lecturers in the faculty.
“A home science graduate was assigned to teach a
public health engineering unit at Masinde Muliro University while a
geologist was engaged to teach geotechnical engineering at the same
university,” EBK said.
The agency made the revelations in documents it
filed in court in response to a suit filed by engineering graduates it
has refused to grant practising certificates.
The EBK also claims it found agricultural engineers
teaching other engineering disciplines at Egerton University, putting
to doubt the quality of teaching.
Seven lecturers proposed to teach four programmes
in the university’s engineering department were also found not
registered engineers as required by the regulator.
Besides, the EBK says, Egerton has been using
workshops meant to train diploma and certificate courses to teach
undergraduate students.
The glaring deficiencies helped the EBK to
successfully reverse a High Court ruling that had compelled the board to
register engineering graduates from programmes it had not accredited.
It paints a picture of a mechanical breakdown in
Kenya’s engineering faculties, and raises questions over the Commission
for University Education’s role in quality assurance.
“The learned judge erred in finding that the
appellant (EBK) did not require to go behind the degree certificates
issued by Egerton and Masinde Muliro universities,” said the three-judge
bench consisting of David Maraga, Roselyn Nambuye and George Kariuki.
The EBK had moved to the Court of Appeal arguing
that it had powers to ‘approve’ and ‘accredit’ all engineering
programmes at tertiary institutions. The board told the three-judge
bench that it could not license engineers from courses it had not
accredited.
It is an offence to admit learners, train, and
award certificates in engineering programmes without the approval of
EBK, according to the Engineers Act (2011).
About 9,000 graduates trained as engineers in local
universities but have since been denied accreditation moved to court
seeking orders to have EBK compelled to award them practising licences.
High Court judge David Majanja, in a judgment delivered in
October 2012, gave the EBK two weeks to register the affected
engineering students and ordered the board to pay each of graduates
Sh200,000 as compensation for general damages.
The EBK has rejected some engineering courses and
graduates from Kenyatta University, Masinde Muliro and the Technical
University of Mombasa on the grounds of quality.
The board last week allowed KU to offer civil, mechanical as well as electrical and electronic engineering degree courses.
The agency gave a blow-by-blow account of how it
had on multiple occasions advised public universities to address the
challenges facing their courses but the advisories fell on deaf ears.
For instance, Moi University and Jomo Kenyatta
University of Agriculture and Technology recalled their engineering
graduates to cover gaps in their programmes that the EBK audit had
pointed out, the court was told.
“Egerton and Masinde Muliro universities promised to do that but did not,” the board told the judges.
Besides, the EBK had fired a letter to Masinde
Muliro, informing the institution that its engineering programmes could
only be approved if it “employed qualified staff and provided proper
infrastructure.”
The board said: “The University had to provide
proper laboratories for high voltage power systems; electrical machines;
telecommunications; control engineering; electronics; and microwaves.”
In another letter dated September 27, 2011, EBK
warned Masinde Muliro that its programmes were not accredited. “The
graduates of the said programmes are not registrable,” the board
cautioned the university.
In another letter dated June 26, 2009, the board
informed Egerton that its engineering department lacked qualified staff
and teaching facilities.
“The university lacked adequate staff and some of
the lecturers it had employed were unqualified,” the EBK said in the
letter filed in court.
“Most of the staff are trained in agricultural
engineering and related disciplines and are therefore not qualified to
teach the proposed degree programmes.”
Egerton had designated agricultural engineering
lecturers to teach disciplines such as telecommunications; industrial
technology; manufacturing engineering and technology; civil engineering
and technology; civil engineering; electrical and control engineering;
instrumentation and control engineering; mechanical engineering; and
water and environmental engineering.
The three-judge bench wondered why university
administrators did little to comply with the board’s accreditation
requirements, yet blamed EBK for their woes. “So the respondents were
aware of and acknowledged the appellant’s concerns but ignored them.
They cannot, therefore, blame the appellant for their plight,” the Court
of Appeal judges said
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