NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 28 – Investment, Trade, and Industry Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria has disclosed plans to privatize some of the public universities in the nation in an effort to improve their financial stability and return them to their prior standing as centers of excellence.
Kuria claimed that the majority of the nation’s universities are in bad shape and have billions of shillings in debt.
He added that this is happening because the local market’s supply of education has outpaced its demand.
“We have to agree that a lot of universities in this country are in terrible shape. We need to privatize some of our universities and I am currently in talks with international investors who are keen to partner with local universities,” Kuria said.
“We need to ensure that our universities go back to being centers of excellence.”
According to the CS, he is currently in talks with foreign investors who are willing to partner with local colleges to improve their financial standing.
Kuria continued by saying that the risk of having universities is catching up with the current government, although, other government tried their best to control the number of students entering the public universities, even trying to offer scholarships to private students, but it didn’t help lessen the burden of debt in public universities.
“The rush to have more universities is catching up with us. And business and economy has got rules, you can only bend them to some point, and I think the system has been tested up to the limit and it is napping,” he said.
“I am speaking with some of the international investors who are willing to partner with our universities to privately run some of them profitably.”
He expressed confidence that the government would enter the international market and capitalize on the fact that the nation has one of the top educational institutions in the world.
“Ministry of Education and I will work to establish the actual demand for university education for the local market. We want to match America in terms of being the center of excellence for international education,” Kuria said.
The textbook industry, according to Kuria, is run similarly to the school uniform industry, which he had previously condemned, necessitating a reassessment of the nation’s textbook rules.
He promised that measures will be put in place to prevent policy violations and abuse.
“We will do a review on the textbook policies to ensure those book stores and those who control them go as per the measures put in place and ensure they are not abused,” he said.
“We do not want to kill businesses either, and we are not going to use our uniform policy, or textbook policy all we want I Kenyans to work, to trade, to manufacture, to produce and to own their economy.”
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