One on one
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1 . HOW HAS YOUR EXPERIENCE SHAPED YOU INTO THE LEADER YOU ARE TODAY ?
Professionally , I have been in the higher education sector for 23 years , this is my 24th year . I started as a humble Accounts Clerk and I worked my way up to become the Chief Operations Officer ( COO ) of the Higher Education Loans Board ( HELB ). At HELB , I began honing my leadership skills by leading small teams and I grew over time to manage bigger teams . I found joy inspiring my teams to meet targets and day to day challenges . As my responsibilities grew , I attended various training programs that opened my mind on how to lead and manage people . Reading widely also helped me upscale my leadership skills . And by the time I became COO I had learnt new ways to inspire and motivate my 120 members of staff , to pursue a vision that would drive the institution to achieve beyond its core mandate , which included ; lending , loan recoveries and documentation .
2 . YOU ARE NOW 9 MONTHS OLD AT THE HELM OF THE UNIVERSITIES FUND , HOW HAS THE TRANSITION BEEN FOR YOU ?
When I joined in December 2020 , the Fund had not been operationalized and was minimally resourced . I took over an institution with only one employee , who happened to be the acting CEO , the Fund occupied 3 rooms at Teleposta Towers and the budget was only 24 million . However , in 9 months I have been able to lobby and our budget has been increased from 24million to 244million . With the support of the Cabinet Secretary , the Fund was allocated more spacious offices in the NACOSTI building where we currently are . Within this same period we have managed to come up with a revised Differentiated Unit Cost ( DUC ). And we are currently undertaking public private participation for the university funding framework which will include university DUC , a formula for capital infrastructure funds and new performance based funding model . It is not easy to navigate the numerous challenges faced by universities with huge debts going into 60 Billion , but with the involvement of stakeholders , we believe we are up to the task . We also believe that our new strategic plan will guide the institution to make positive change in the coming 5 years .
3 . PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE DIFFERENTIATED UNIT COST ( DUC )?
DUC is a model whereby universities are allocated budgets according to the number of students enrolled in their institutions and the type of courses they offer . The model differentiates the programs because the resources required for example to teach medicine are not the same as those required for an Arts course . Students pursuing Medicine course will take more practical courses , the equipment required is more expensive , and more professors from different specialties will be required . Therefore a student studying medicine will inevitably get more funding than one offering a social science course .
4 . WHAT IS THE UNIVERSITIES FUND MANDATE ?
The University Funds mandate is to advise the Cabinet Secretary on matters to do with universities funding and related policy issues . Secondly , is to develop a clear , transparent and fair methodology of allocating funds to universities . After allocating the funds , the UF is also mandated to disburse funds to both public and private universities , this includes issuing conditional grants . And also in consultation with the Chair Persons of councils of public universities , the Fund also establishes DUCs for programs offered . We also establish the minimum disciplined differentiated remuneration for universities academic staff . Another crucial role of the Fund is to mobilize and receive funds from government , donors and other stakeholders for the purpose of funding universities . Those are our key responsibilities .
5 . LAST YEAR ( 2020 ), THE GOVERNMENT SLASHED FUNDING TO UNIVERSITIES BY ABOUT 25 %. HOW HAS THIS AFFECTED THE ROLL OUT OF THE DUC ?
This has definitely been affected , because in the last financial year we were funding the DUC at 60 % at an average of 170,000 per student . This has now reduced to 53.77 %, so we are now funding students at an average of 154,385 . Actually the funding has not been slashed , the reason you see the 6 % reduction is because the number of students enrolled in the universities this past year has increased . The government increased the budget by 700,000KES but the numbers of students increased by 30,000 this is where the gap is .
6 . WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FUNDING SOURCES FOR PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN KENYA ?
Public universities generate income from government budget allocation and internal revenues . The main source of income is the government allocation categorized as Recurrent , based on Differentiated Unit Cost ( DUC ) which was implemented in the 2017 / 18 financial year . This accounts for the largest share of university expenditure catering mainly for staff expenses , administration , learning materials and teaching . This allocation also goes towards capital funding , which includes funds for development and infrastructure , which is critical to ensure quality and relevance in university education and research . Other sources of income for public universities is internally generated funds by university departments , relevant Ministries , agencies and donors who fund universities directly , this funds are usually spent at source .
Public universities also generate revenue through tuition fees and income generating activities . This revenue amounts to approximately 5 % of budget required to run the universities and includes revenue
EdSource Quarterly | Oct-Dec l 2021