Fix the university funding mess before it destroys a generation

Kenya cannot claim to be investing in its future while thousands of young people who have earned places at public universities remain at home because their families cannot raise admission fees or because government funding has become trapped in an uncertain transition.

The unfolding crisis in public universities is no longer simply an administrative inconvenience. It is becoming a direct threat to access to higher education, family finances and the aspirations of an entire generation.

More than 700,000 students were enrolled in universities in 2025, with enrolment rising by 12.5 per cent in one year. Yet academic staffing increased by only 6.4 per cent, underlining the growing strain on institutions.

Now, as a new cohort enters university, the funding system itself is under severe pressure.

The government’s transition towards a new framework, pending consideration of the Tertiary Education, Placement and Funding Bill, has created uncertainty over how students will finance their education. Stakeholders have already called for predictable disbursement deadlines and clear distinctions between loans, scholarships, grants and bursaries.

For families living from hand to mouth, uncertainty is not an academic concept. It has immediate consequences.

Consider the case of Davin Kemunto from Nyamira County, who secured admission to Kisii University to study secondary-school teaching but says her parents could not raise the Sh20,000 required for her to report. She applied for a HELB loan but says she is still waiting for financial support.

Her predicament illustrates the human cost of a system being redesigned without sufficient certainty for the people expected to navigate it.

A university admission letter should represent an opportunity, not a financial dead end.

The Ministry of Education must therefore move with urgency to provide clear answers. Students and parents need to know who qualifies for funding, how much they will receive, when the money will be disbursed and what happens during the transition to the new system.

The government cannot suspend one framework while students wait indefinitely for another to become operational.

Neither can it expect poor and vulnerable families to finance the transition through money they simply do not have.

This crisis is compounded by a second threat: the looming lecturers’ strike.

UASU has issued a seven-day strike notice, with lecturers set to down their tools on October 2 over the stalled 2025–2029 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The union says university councils, the Ministry of Education and the National Treasury have failed to honour the November 5, 2025 Return-to-Work Formula.

UASU has also raised concern that the Government has not provided a financial counter-proposal for the new CBA.

SRC, according to the union, said it could not provide the required constitutional advice because neither the Education Ministry nor Treasury had provided written commitment that funding would come through the National Exchequer.

These are not isolated problems.

Student funding is in uncertainty. Universities are underfunded. Staffing is inadequate. Lecturers are threatening industrial action. Infrastructure is under pressure.

Taken together, they point to a higher education system approaching a dangerous breaking point.

The government must stop treating each crisis as a separate problem and confront the university funding crisis as a single national emergency.

It must urgently secure funding for students already admitted, ensure that no qualified learner is locked out because of delays in government disbursements, and provide universities with predictable financing.

It must also bring UASU and university councils back to the negotiating table and resolve the CBA dispute before another academic disruption takes hold.

The lecturers’ grievances cannot be solved by passing the financial burden to students through higher fees.

Indeed, UASU has questioned how universities would finance staff agreements if student-fee collections remain uncertain under a changing funding model.

The Education Ministry and Treasury must provide clarity, not competing explanations.

Parliament, meanwhile, must scrutinise the proposed funding legislation carefully and ensure that the eventual framework guarantees continuity of financing from admission through graduation.

A funding system that leaves students wondering whether they can afford to report to university is not a functioning system.

Higher education is not merely another government programme. For thousands of Kenyan families, it is the pathway through which children escape poverty, acquire professional skills and improve the economic circumstances of their households.

Every semester lost, every student forced to defer and every family pushed into unsustainable debt carries a long-term cost.

Kenya cannot afford to create a generation that qualifies for university but cannot afford to attend it.

The Ministry of Education must fix the funding mess now — before an administrative transition becomes a national tragedy measured not in budget lines, but in dreams abandoned, careers delayed and families pushed deeper into poverty.