Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has denounced reports that the government is planning to stop funding public universities.
Speaking on Tuesday, November 8 in Kiambu, the CS stated that no one said that the university funding was to be scrapped.
“I want to make a clarification. Nobody ever said that university funds were going to be done away with. No,” Machogu stated.
The Education CS stated that the government has already allocated Ksh 50 billion to fund public universities and another Ksh 15 billion for the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB).
“The Government has allocated capitation of Sh50 billion for University education and another Sh15.8 billion to the Higher Education Loans Board. I want to assure our universities that the Sh50 billion and the other Sh15.8 billion to HELB are ringfenced and nobody is interfering with that money,” Machogu stated.
Machogu further stated that the government through the Ministry of Education will support both Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions and universities.
“We remain optimistic that, as we sustain our support for both the TVET and University subsectors, the institutions will continue with their longstanding tradition of diversifying their income generation activities to ensure they do even better,” Machogu said.
His clarification comes days after Kenyans raised uproar on social media after reports emerged that the government could stop funding public universities.
CS Machogu had on Saturday, November 5 Stated that universities should look for alternative revenue sources to address the current cash crunch afflicting many institutions of higher learning.
” We are encouraging that they must generate their own revenue because the ex- checker as it is now is not going to be able to continue funding more because in Kenya education takes 25. 9 per cent so we have to find other ways of creating and generating revenue for universities and they have to look at other revenue schemes,” he said.
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