A graduation ceremony. Universities regulator has started imposing caps
on the admission of Masters and PhD students. FILE PHOTO | NMG
The universities regulator has started imposing caps on the
admission of Masters and PhD students based on the lecturer population
and qualifications amid questions over the quality of post-graduate
degrees.
degrees.
The Commission for University Education (CUE)
on Wednesday admitted that universities were taking in more post
graduate students than they can manage, lowering the quality of Masters
and PhD students.
“The regulations are very clear and
we have to enforce them to the letter,” said CUE chief executive officer
Mwendwa Ntarangwi in the wake of a shocking report on poor supervision
of 118 PhDs at Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology
(JKUAT) campuses and which have since been recalled for review.
The
regulations require that a lecturer must not supervise more than five
Masters students and three scholars pursing PhD qualifications.
Universities have breached this ratio, lecturers say.
The
enforcement of the caps comes at a time when an increasing number of
Kenyans are pursing postgraduate qualifications for career growth in the
competitive job market.
Kenya National Bureau of Statistics data shows that student
enrolment on Master's and PhD programmes in public universities stood at
67,407 in the year to June 2017, up from 16,153 in a similar period in
2012—reflecting a 317 per cent growth.
The
review of teaching and award of postgraduate degrees started after
Kenyans questioned 118 PhDs awarded by JKUAT during its graduation
ceremony in June. It emerged that one JKUAT professor had supervised
more than 10 PhD students.
The JKUAT audit revealed
that 58 of the 118 questionable PhDs were taught in satellite campuses,
yet they did not have the requisite human resource capacity.
Of
the 308 PhD awarded at JKUAT in the last three years, only 160 were
trained at the Juja main campus which means 148 PhD were from the nine
campuses spread across the country.
On Wednesday, JKUAT
Vice Chancellor Prof Victoria Ngumi said the university had set up a
team to look at the CUE report—which revealed breaches like failure to
follow guidelines on supervision load, duration of research, evidence of
meetings between students and lecturers. The audit also questioned the
publications or refereed journals where the graduates published their
works. A refereed journal contains scholarly articles that have been
reviewed for their quality by recognised academics or experts in the
field.
“The Deans Committee, a subcommittee of the
University Senate, is working on the report, paying attention to the
various findings and recommendations made by the CUE,” said Prof Ngumi.
“All degrees of the university are meritoriously earned and no student
is allowed to graduate without going through the due process regarding
coursework, seminars, original research, external examination and
publications,” said the VC.
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