University funding models raise concerns about policy experimentation. [Courtesy]
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.