Recently, I sat with a friend of mine who has been teaching at university for the last 30 years. We were talking generally about university life. The emerging issue was that there are many students who are dropping out of campus. The rising number of students who cut off their university and college education should be alarming to education authorities and the government. This, to me, was totally shocking. I sort out to know why this is so.
One of the most emerging problems is the lack of access to university fees and other financial requirements. Many students who were admitted in University through the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) are usually not supported by their parents because of the government subsidy. Some students have even expressed fear that their parents totally forget about them after registering. Considering the fact that The Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) does not support everyone, and the students are supposed to be in class throughout, it thus becomes very difficult for a student to work full-time while at the same time study. This has led to so many students dropping out of University so as to fend for themselves. This, according to the professor, was the major reason.
Another problem that emerged is poor performance in exams that leads to discontinuation by the university. Many schools have put in place policies where if one fails a minimum number of subjects and is not able to pass, they are truncated as members of the intellectual community. The question thus would be what drives students into failing exams? ‘The answer is fundamentally a problem of ignorance than nature,’ explained the professor.
It is required that when a student selects a course, they must have the strength and focus to keep studying the course, and thus there wouldn’t be an excuse of a student not coping with the classroom stuff. It is also emerging that some students don’t study at all, go to parties from Mondays to Sundays and thus end up having not time to study. When exams come, they fail and thus expelled. The professor was at pains to explain this trend, citing that peer pressure has led many students lose their lives to partying every time, which has a detrimental effect on their studies. Other identified problems were crime and pregnancies, which are fully a matter of choice.
In order to avoid all this social problems, there is a way one can make good sense of university life. Psychologists have argued that three hours of study per day are enough to make a student pass. While getting finances to keep studying might be a global problem and not a Kenyan problem at all, students should learn the skills of creating jobs while still at the university or looking for part time jobs. This does not only increase their chances of financial survival but also education. Partying is a good way to hang out, but scholars also argue that doing it every day is not only dangerous to your finances but also hazardous to every aspect of life. In order to make sense of parties, students should also be able to know how to budget their money, when to go out and develop efficient methods of studying.