Useless university degree courses: 75 students who pursued unregulated snd unauthorized degrees at the University of Nairobi were in July 2021 awarded Sh. 15 million as compensation by the High Court. The Technical University of Kenys, which had issued the degrees on behalf of University of Nairobi was also ordered to forward their names to UoN so that they could be included in the list of next graduates. These students had unsuspectingly enrolled for engineering courses that were neither recognized nor authorized by the local engineers board. This meant that they couldn’t get any jobs in the market. Their degrees were rendered useless.
This is however not the first time that unsuspecting students are pursuing useless university degree courses are. In 2019, it was revealed that thousands of students were wasting time and money studying useless degree programmes in various Kenyan universities.
This was after the Commission for University Education (CUE) rejected 133 courses with a cumulative enrolment capacity of 10,000 slots.
CUE is supposed to approve all the academic programmes taught in local universities.
Of concern was that there were students already studying these programmes who would either be forced to discontinue their studies due to mistakes that are not of their own making or become unmarketable after graduation.
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For those who might have finished studying these “useless” programmes, it meant that their academic papers won’t be recognised by prospective employers and therefore end up jobless. The shock findings emerged after the CUE audited universities in 2018.
The audit also exposed how universities, in their haste to mint cash from huge enrolment, misrepresented their capacity, both in resources and teaching staff.
Data revealed that CUE has slashed nearly 30,000 slots from the universities.
The report showed that all the public and private universities declared available capacity of 163,925 for the various courses but after a rigorous assessment on their capacities, only 134,075 were approved.
Of the 133 unapproved course, Tom Mboya University College had the most at 25. Garissa University and Alupe University had 10 unapproved programmes each while Great Lakes University of Kisumu had eight.
Seven courses were rejected at Kenya Highlands Evangelical University while University of Embu, Lukenya University and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology had six rejected courses each.
CUE rejected four of Kenyatta University courses and a similar number at Karatina University. Three courses were rejected at Moi University.
The regulator also turned down five courses at Turkana University College, two at Kabarak University and a similar number at Kenya Methodist University.
All the three programmes at Mama Ngina University with a total capacity of 90 were rejected by CUE. According to the report, the institution was not an accredited university college at the time.
Most of the programmes rejected were not approved by CUE, others were duplicated while in some cases, the institutions did not have capacities to teach the programmes.
At Africa International University that declared a total of 10 programmes, CUE only seven of them made the cut.
At Alupe University College, of the 18 programmes declared, CUE authorised only eight. Two of the programmes were not approved.
In 2018, a related report had exposed massive irregularities on programmes taught in the universities. The Quality Audit Inspection Report showed that some universities had mounted courses which did not have students.
“Some of universities offered academic programmes and did not provide evidence of approval of programmes by respective senates while others had programmes approved by CUE but had no students,” said the report.