The ministry of Education said it was in talks with the board to determine the fate of thousands of students pursuing engineering courses that have not been approved. For an engineer to practice in Kenya, they must be graduates of a university approved by the board and worked under a ‘competent’ engineering firm for at least three years. They are then registered and given a certificate to practise. REPEAT But Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi has given an indication that students who have already completed their courses and are due to graduate will not be forced to repeat their degree programmes. “We will meet with EBK to deliberate on the way forward and allow the students to graduate. We expect to reach an agreement this week,” said Prof Kaimenyi. The recent spate of student unrest that has seen some universities closed has been attributed to anxiety over the uncertainty surrounding suspension of the engineering programmes. EBK registrar Nicholas Mulinge said the universities had not hired qualified personnel to teach engineering. “We asked them to hire what we call ‘thematic leaders’, who are professionals with depth of both experience and qualification in specific areas to head their programmes, but they have failed,” Mr Mulinge lamented. Vice-chancellors and EBK will meet this week to determine the next move for the KU, JKUAT, Egerton, Technical University of Mombasa, Maseno universities and all university colleges offering engineering courses. Only one engineering course — Environment and Bio Systems — at the University of Nairobi is yet to be cleared by the EBK, out of six courses that the institution offers. “The problem started when university senates approved courses without regard to professional regulators because the universities were autonomous entities,” said Mr Mulinge. However, universities lost the autonomy with the coming into force of the Universities Act (2012), which gave the Commission for University Education and professional groups such as the EBK, powers to approve and accredit programmes. Before, the senates approved all degree courses the institutions offered after their faculties developed programmes. This is how most public universities started engineering courses even without enough lecturers and qualified ones.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 12:49:14 +0000