The government deserves credit for reconsidering Kenya’s higher education funding model.
The proposed system, which seeks to guarantee financial support for every student admitted to a university or college, is a welcome move towards making higher education genuinely inclusive.
The previous banding system was based on a reasonable idea: give more support to students from poorer households. In practice, however, the system created difficult questions about how accurately families were assessed and whether the support provided was enough.
The pressure has been particularly visible in Tvet institutions, where fees have risen sharply and dropout rates have become a concern. Official2024 data recorded more than 35,000 dropouts from public Tvet institutions.
But universal access should not simply mean universal indebtedness.
The government must ensure that the proposed model does not shift the cost of higher education from taxpayers to young people through loans they may struggle to repay.
Helb undergraduate and Tvet loans already attract interest, meaning a student can leave college with a substantial financial obligation before securing a stable income.
Kenya needs a funding system that achieves two things at once: no qualified student should be locked out of higher education because of poverty, and no graduate should begin working life under an unreasonable debt burden.
