UoN Discontinues The Following Ten Courses in Full
UoN Discontinues The Following Ten Courses in Full
The University of Nairobi has suspended ten common undergraduate courses from its list offered for sustainability.
Communication skills, Fundamentals of Development and Their Applications, Human Health, Law in Society, Environment Science, and Chemistry and its Applications are the courses that are affected.
As of the 2022-23 school year, the University will no longer provide a number of courses, including Science and Technology in Development, Elements of Philosophy, Elements of Economics, and HIV/AIDS.
Prof. Stephen Kiama, the university’s vice chancellor, has argued that strategic interventions centered on people are necessary if the institution is to achieve its goal.
‘‘The senate recently deliberated on this matter and approved a series of targeted interventions that are aimed at making the university more relevant, vibrant and sustainable,’’ said Kiama.
Kiama noted that this will improve the development of common undergraduate courses that are connected with national and global demands. He was speaking during the 67th Graduation, which was also the occasion on which 85 PhD Degrees were conferred.
To shorten the courses, over 250 units were canceled in 2021.
Kiama stated that the university would only hire for essential departments and cut additional courses from the present 324 to place greater emphasis on engineering, medicine, and information technology.
‘‘We suspended new appointments unless in critical areas, we rationalised programmes offering to focus on our flood ship programmes. In the process, we have in the three years collected 8.2 billion and are still counting,’’ This, Kiama said.
The Professor stated that a decrease in the amount of waste and leakage in its financial systems helped in re-engineering the financial operations.
He continued by saying that the university’s relevance efforts had failed because of the high costs of maintaining the institution.
‘‘This financial gain continues to be eroded by unfinanced collective bargaining agreements that are signed between the employer and the unions as well as the underfunded Differentiated Unit Cost. The last CBA resulted in an increase of 1.6 billion on our payroll in the financial year 2022/2023,’’ he said.
According to a memo dated September 19, 2022 and sent internally by the University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor DVC Academic Affairs Professor Julius Okeng’o, the university stated that it came at the decision in order to ensure the institution’s continued viability.
‘‘By a copy of this memo, the Director of Information and Communication Technology, is required to withdraw them from the system all together,’’ read the statement.
Kiama pleaded for the government to back the university’s initiative and provide it the funding it needs to fulfill its civic mandate.
‘‘We launched the university of Nairobi foundation on June 30, 2022 as a special purpose vehicle for resourcing the university through mobilising of private capital and donations from philanthropists,’’ he said.
Amb. Simon Nabukwesi, the PS for University Education and Research, has asked universities to provide courses focused on current market demands.
‘‘We want to support sustainability and we wish that the universities improve and be even profoundly globally competitive with the best of the universities,’’ said Nabukwesi.
