Kenya to cancel university degrees awarded to undeserving people

Kenya’s Commission for University Education, after an audit of higher education in the country, has discovered a number of failings including lack of anti-plagiarism policies to failure to adhere to admission criteria and unqualified people admitted to do PhD courses with questionable ‘executive’ masters degrees.

Generally, the problem of weak academic systems in Africa is deep seated, among them legitimate academics falling prey to predatory journals and university teachers with degrees from diploma mills.

While the audit report hasn’t been published yet, the country’s Education Minister has spoken about the widespread rot in training and awarding of degrees at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

The Minister, Fred Matiang’I has said at a press conference on February 16, 2017 that both executive masters and undeserved honorary degrees will be cancelled.

“We will not allow our university education to rot as we watch. Some of these wrongly issued degrees will have to be cancelled or recalled. Let those who have them acquire papers in the right way,” he said.

The audit confirms what the public knows for a long time— it is public knowledge that universities have a worrying shortage of lecturers with PhDs. The Commission describes this as “the greatest challenge to the provision of quality education in most of our universities”.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi