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New Funding Model has shifted universities to businesses.[iStockphoto]
The government has announced plans to remove university funding from the national budget and move higher education towards a market-based financing model from October 2026. The proposal comes as Kenya is grappling with the consequences of its new student-centred higher education funding model, under which university and TVET students receive different combinations of scholarships and loans depending on their assessed financial need.
On the surface, this may sound like a technical solution to a fiscal problem. The government is under enormous pressure to reduce expenditure, universities are struggling financially, and public resources are increasingly constrained by debt repayments and competing demands. But education is not simply another line item in a government's spreadsheet. The question of who pays for education is ultimately a question about who is entitled to knowledge, who is allowed to imagine a future, and what kind of society the State is prepared to build. A market-based approach risks transforming education from a public good into a private commodity whose availability increasingly depends on one's ability to pay the loan that will be imposed on all students.
