Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i has called for a consultative meeting between Kisii and Laikipia University councils with the Commission for University Education (CUE) after compliance concerns.
Matiang’I has told Capital News beat that the meeting will be held at his office on Wednesday morning.
“I have called for a consultative meeting with the councils of the two universities and the commission over the compliance concerns,” the CS said on telephone.
This follows a decision by the Commission for University Education which ordered the closure of several campuses for the two Universities for failing to comply with its regulations.
“It is imperative for universities to comply with regulations when setting up campuses,” he said.
The worst hit is Kisii University which will have its 13 satellite campuses closed.
In a press briefing on Friday, Commission Chairperson Henry Thairu said they took the decision to carry out the audit after closing 10 out of 13 of its campuses for failing to meet their minimum requirements.
“Campuses that obtained a score of less than 50 percent on the evaluation criteria or scored less than half on campus organisation into tuition, administrative and residential areas were identified for closure.
Others are those located in environments incompatible with learning such as near bars, casinos, brothels, bus parks, markets, airports, quarries, dumpsites or factories.
The university has been given 90 days to relocate the students in the closed campuses to the three that remain accredited.
Campuses ordered closed include those in Eldoret, Eldama Ravine, Nyamira, Kabarnet, Migori, Ogembo, Keroka, Kehancha, Kapenguria and the Isebania.
The Kisumu, Kericho and Kitale campuses are under review and the university administrators have three months to months to meet the set requirements.
Thairu also announced that they do not recognise five PhD degrees the university awarded in December and the degrees of two of the students in their Master Degree programmes.
“Student admissions were highly irregular based on postgraduate credit transfers policy that is not provided for in either the Kisii University statutes or the Universities Standards and Guidelines, 2014. The commission would also like to state that it does not recognise the degrees of two students who were admitted into Master Degree programmes at Kisii University from other local universities irregularly.
Laikipia University also has three months from January 14, to relocate the students in its Nyahururu campus which was also identified for closure.
“Students should be careful as to where they go to university; to go to accredited institutions. If you don’t do then you take the responsibility of only having a paper certificate,” Thairu cautioned.
Between January and December last year, the commission in its first satellite campus accreditation exercise, inspected a total of 56 campuses in Nairobi, Lodwar, Western, Nyanza and Rift Valley.
It identified eight for closure in Nairobi and now the 11 in Western, Nyanza and Rift Valley.
It is currently in the process of inspecting campuses in Eastern, Central and the Coastal region. “We clustered the regions into three,” Commission CEO David Some explained.
Mbatia said the peer review of Kisii University should take two weeks and its reports two months to compile for review by the Education Cabinet Secretary.
