A philosophical question is at the heart of Kenya's emerging university crisis: what does a society that claims to value knowledge owe those who produce, preserve, and transmit it? This question has become urgent as lecturers in public universities stand on the precipice of industrial action, with the University Staff Union of Kenya (Uasu) seven-day notice expiring on October 2. Uasu national organising secretary Onesmus Mutio led the protest outside the National Assembly on September 24, presenting a petition.
To understand how lecturers arrived at this point, we must go back to November last year when, after a 49-day strike, Uasu signed a return-to-work formula on November 5. The agreement included concluding negotiations for the 2025-2029 collective bargaining agreement (CBA). However, months passed, and negotiations continued, but the employer side failed to table the financial counter-proposal necessary to conclude the agreement. On September 18, Uasu gave the government and the Inter-Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum (IPUCCF) one month to negotiate, sign, register, and implement the CBA.
The immediate trigger for the strike was the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) informing university-sector unions on September 21 that neither the Ministry of Education nor the National Treasury had provided a written commitment that funding for public university CBAs would come through the National Exchequer. Without that commitment, SRC could not provide the advice necessary to facilitate financial counter-proposals. This has led to a dispute that goes beyond salaries, questioning the philosophical status of the public university and the kind of knowledge society Kenya wants to build.
IPUCCF must answer for its part in the prolonged negotiations, as university councils are the employer. The Ministry of Education and the National Treasury also cannot escape responsibility, as the government's principal policy custodian of the education sector and financier of higher education, respectively. SRC occupies an uncomfortable position, with its constitutional mandate regarding remuneration and benefits, but affordability cannot become a perpetual condition through which collective bargaining is endlessly deferred.
Uasu has been confronted with the possibility that public university staff remuneration could increasingly depend on student fees and market-based sources. The union rejects this, insisting that academic staff in public universities are public officers whose remuneration should be secured through the National Exchequer. A public university is not merely a business selling degrees but a national institution of knowledge producing professionals and conducting research that may have no immediate commercial return but immense long-term social value.
The proposed Tertiary Education Placement and Funding Bill must be approached with care, as government reforms aim to streamline placement, loans, scholarships, and financing. However, Parliament must interrogate not merely what the Bill says explicitly but also what its funding architecture could produce in practice. Parliament should resist treating the current crisis as merely a question of funding mechanisms, and Kenya needs a comprehensive review of higher education, including financing, staffing, research mandate, governance, infrastructure, remuneration, student support, and relationship with the national development agenda.
The public must understand the lecturers' grievance, as the immediate image is that of students whose education is about to be disrupted. However, lecturers are not the enemy of students but rather the producers of knowledge upon which professional life depends. The lecturer's strike is a protest against a system in which knowledge producers increasingly feel like an afterthought. A society cannot build a knowledge economy while undervaluing its knowledge workers, making the present dispute a concern for every Kenyan.
Key points
- The university crisis raises questions about the value of knowledge and the role of universities in Kenya's development.
- The dispute is not just about salaries but also about the financing of higher education and the status of public universities.
- A comprehensive review of higher education is necessary to address the crisis and ensure that universities can produce the human capital required to transform Kenya.
