Rising tuition fees drive Kenyan learners abroad

By Mary Njoroge

A growing number of Kenyan students are signing up to foreign universities in record numbers amid rising education costs and poor quality of higher education in local universities.

Inflated tuition fees, exorbitant housing costs for college students, quality of faculty, and curriculum standards as well as administrative policies in institutions of higher learning are some of the reasons being cited by learners who are now moving abroad for alternatives.

The US, UK, Canada and Australia as well as Malaysia remain the top preferred destinations for Kenyan learners seeking overseas learning particularly for their undergraduate studies.

Omar Mohamed – the Chief executive of EduCare International, a Kenyan-based student recruitment firm, say those concerns have led to an increased number of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) students abandoning prestigious institutions such as the University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenyatta University (KU) and Moi University among others for international campuses.

“Foreign countries like the US, UK, China, Australia among others are known to allow international students to take a part-time job in their countries. These quality of education in such countries are also unmatched contrary to what we are seeing here,” noted Mohamed – adding that his firm receives up to 800 such applications each year.

He was speaking in Nairobi during the Higher Education Exhibition forum, organized by EduCare International – a forum that attracted over 50 Universities.

Last month Kenyan Vice-chancellors revitalized the petition to increase tuition fees in public universities to keep the institutions afloat.

A memo from the Ministry of Education will see the push to by the top university administrators review tuition fees in the next intake of first years.

This came after a meeting of vice-chancellors on September 23 that sought policy options to ensure financial sustainability of the universities as some rely on short-term loans to finance their operations.

The officials had earlier proposed that tuition fees be increased to Sh48,000 from the current Sh16,000 for fresh students to ease cash flow challenges that have affected service delivery.