When university funding becomes a government guessing game

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Kenya has discovered a fascinating way of running higher education: change the funding model whenever the previous one becomes inconvenient, then explain the new one with the confidence of a government that has just invented education.

The latest proposal, announced by Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba, moves away from assessing parents' financial circumstances under the Student-Centred Funding Model and introduces the Universal Student Funding Model, supposedly focused on investing directly in students' professional futures.

It sounds wonderful. Almost poetic.

But one cannot help asking: when did university financing become a laboratory for political trial and error?

First came the Differentiated Unit Cost model. Then came the Student-Centred Funding Model in 2023, based on the Means Testing Instrument. We were told this was the answer. Parents were assessed, students classified, universities expected to survive and everybody was encouraged to believe that the mathematical gods had finally descended upon higher education.

Three years later, apparently, the gods have reconsidered.

Now the government says assessing parents was the problem. The new thinking is to fund the student's future rather than the parent's current financial ability.

Fair enough.

But what happened to the research that justified the previous model?

Did it expire?

Did it graduate?

Or was it quietly dismissed for failing to meet the new political timetable?

This is where Kenyan education policy becomes wonderfully comic. A government can spend years producing curricula, commissions, task forces, consultations and strategic plans, only to announce a new funding model with the casualness of someone changing a WhatsApp profile picture.

The CS says the government is “continuously refining” the model.

Refining?

At this rate, Kenyan university students may graduate with a degree in Funding Model Evolution.

The problem is not that policies should never change. They should. Evidence changes, circumstances change and better approaches emerge. But serious policy change should be driven by evidence, not by political convenience or administrative discomfort.

Where are the comparative studies?

Where is the evidence showing that the new model will perform better than DUC or the Student-Centred Funding Model?

Where are the pilot results?

Where is the independent assessment showing what worked, what failed and why?

Instead, we appear to be conducting national education policy the way some Kenyans repair television sets: try this wire; if it does not work, bring another one.

And the casualties are students.

A university education takes years, but our funding models seem to have shorter lifespans than some political promises. A student who enters university under one arrangement cannot simply tell the registrar, “Please wait; the government is still testing another model.”

Universities need predictable funding. Parents need predictable obligations. Students need predictable futures.

Instead, they are being asked to navigate an education system where the rules can change while the examination timetable remains stubbornly unchanged.

The irony is painful. Government says it wants to transform university education into a state-backed investment in human capital. Excellent. But genuine investment requires planning, evidence and predictability.

Otherwise, we are not investing in human capital.

We are experimenting on human beings.

And students are the ones paying the laboratory bill.

Kenya needs an education financing model that can survive ministers, elections and political fashions. Let researchers design it. Let economists test it. Let universities scrutinise it. Let students and parents interrogate it.

Then adopt it and leave it alone long enough to work.

Because education is too important to be governed by the national principle of:

“Let us try this one and see what happens.”

That may be acceptable when choosing a new restaurant.

It is a terrible philosophy for financing a generation.