CERTIFICATION
“ Should college certificates have a caveat attached to them that the said degrees will become moribund after say five years unless a mechanism is in place to ensure that they remain relevant as time goes by ?” that the several systems that we have tampered with are creating the manpower Kenya needs ?
In the forum , we did not actually answer the question but the question was nagging at the back of my head and it appeared to me to be a topic that requires some honest answers and I could not help wonder which stakeholders we involved in the various curriculum developments .
The topic was obviously too complex and has various ramifications to do it justice as an off the cuff question . So outside the session I posed the question to a few of my friends and colleagues and here-under is a sample of the answers I got which point to a need for a more robust discussion .
Dr . Wale Akinyemi says : “ It depends on what you are certified for . I once took a programming course many years ago in university . By the time I graduated and got into the real world the programming language was obsolete . Why should anyone hold onto something that is obsolete ? A person who got certified in the use of typewriters cannot present that certificate today and expect a job . The lifetime of a certificate should be directly proportional to the relevance of the discipline for which it was certified .”
On her part , Thrity Engineer- Mbuthia , a personal development and leadership coach , says : “ the VUCA environment is so fast paced that academic certificates seem outdated even before the graduation ceremony is completed . It may warrant a re-think in the lifespan of the degree . Continuous Professional Development would be much more useful for individuals , helping with up-skilling and knowledge sharing . Graduation cannot be the end of learning but the start .”
Boniface Ngahu suggests that maybe all certification should be subjected to the CPD system . He says , as an example that Kenyan contractors are required to attend some minimum amount of training for their license to be renewed by the National Construction Authority . It is the continuous learning requirement that keeps the diploma relevant over time and he added that all professionals should therefore have similar requirements from their official registrars . It is difficult to envisage a certificate that is good for all times .
Pauline Warui stated that the world was changing at a very fast rate , New innovations through interruptive technologies is the norm yet my first degree is still my claim to fame yet I graduated in 1993 . Internet was unknown and I remember doing courses like MS DOS and WORDSTAR .
Everything goes stale including knowledge and must consistently be refreshed . A professional college would not admit me because I could not get my 1993 transcript yet I had so many other more recent and superior certificates in practical leadership .
The days of framing the degree are long gone and like new emerging technologies one must upgrade their papers to stay relevant . This not only seems intuitive but makes perfect sense as a survival strategy in the current fast paced world .
Dr . Kellen Kiambati believes in lifelong learning . She opines that certifications should not have expiry dates , noting however that there ’ s need to learn , un-learn and re-learn
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MAL 47 / 22 ISSUE