November 26, 2010

Are students going public or private by ESTHER NEEMA COM 361

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:23 am by xpress436

Are students going public or private?
One day as I was walking through the gates of Nairobi University, I remember thinking out loud and saying this is my dream university. Actually I had waited my whole life to walk through the halls of Nairobi University just to get the power to read and write. Never had I thought that private university was an option.

For a while private universities in Kenya have been the other alternative when hope of getting in to public university is crushed. Nairobi University was “the only” university; infarct, if you told your grandmother you were in university she probably assumed you were in Nairobi university.
Over time though, so much more has been done in private universities and now many have opened their minds and don’t see private universities as the other alternative, but as the option.
Talking to the cream of the society, the people who were almost the first students to be in Nairobi University, they speak of it as a heaven of some kind.” During my days we were served with ice cream, scorched eggs and even sausages for breakfast” Dr. Joyce Jefwa speaks proudly as she remembers days of her youth. Seriously!!! Scorched eggs in a public university now, that is totally unimaginable. “It was the time when students in university were really the intellect of the society, well not so the case now, the famous mwakenya and mad cheating have seen people in to the “glorious” universities. These are the categories who at times make it by luck and so they keep doing strikes and don’t mind if they finish school two years more than they would have without striking. nairobijournal.com/? p=519 – Cached. …
www.nation.co.ke/…/Deals%20that%20led%20to%20university%20closure/-/…/-/index.html -
As you drive down Chiromo road getting in to in to town of Nairobi, you will see a lot of not just bad but horrible apartments; you will have to notice, hanging clothes on each of those windows. As you enter the residential places, you are overwhelmed by writings on almost every area of the walls, some good and some very bad, some very nasty, it can be a shock horror.
http://www.graduates.com/ForumComments.aspx?si=291475&ti=256494
According to James Mumo, the situation of the hostels is quite crazy. When asked what he thought of the hostels, this is what he had to say “I think that the public university accommodation is dirty and chaotic. One room which is usually not big is divided in to two compartments, and sometimes people have sleep over for their girlfriends which can make it extremely uncomfortable, if you are the roomy, some even cohabit” He himself is not a student from that campus, he is from Strathmore University, but he has visited and those were his sentiments. In other cases students have been accused of crimes such as possessing illegal stuff. Infarct at some point there was a female student murdered by her lover when she was in the campus in Maseno University http://www.graduates.com/ForumComments.aspx?si=291475&ti=256494. That is not the only case; a male student was murdered in Maseno still by his lover in the hostels. Such a case would be unheard of in a private university like say Daystar, where every turn you take there is a G4S security guard beside you. When on earth can you manage to get away with big crimes? You could only get away with stealing a dress from clothes lines. Over the years there have been trends of crimes such as even rape in public universities, but of course by now a lot has been done to improve the situation; for example at the Kenyatta University floodlights are all over and crime can be detected as least as early as possible.
The once glorious public universities aren’t so glorious anymore and you ask yourself, what happened? What went wrong? At some point bacon and sausages was a delicacy, and now maram, a mixture of beans and maize which even students do complain of the cooking, is the in food.
Well, you can’t really blow trumpet for private completely, there are questions. You have no idea the number of general courses students need to do. Really, there are those that are necessary such as first aid and fitness, but biology and physics, that is definitely pushing it. Though they come out all round, a number of things are repeated over and over until they become too much. Those are hours that are usually paid for, so really it is only fair to either do something new, or not do it at all. Truth is private is already expensive, it is better to pay for new things and extra curricular than to repeat biology or physics. Infarct Eric from public university students was extremely shocked to hear students are doing biology and physics in campus even when they are communication majors or even doing business. At this point, that is where the public universities beat some private universities, because of the extra expenses. General courses like extra languages such as French, German, and other languages would actually be a better consideration as they would add value to students.
In other countries the most prestigious universities are actually public universities such as Harvard. Here in Kenya the highest ranked university is Strathmore which ranks 31 in Africa. And is probably one of the best business schools in Africa. This is not just about the books, but the school has breath taking beauty; a combination of brown and orange as the color scheme, an exotic cafeteria with an extremely organized system. I remember my visit to that cafeteria, and it felt as though I was in the UN offices cafeteria and this is all for students.href=”http://xpress436.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/are-students-going-public-or-private-by-esther-neema-com-361/strathmore-hall-by-esther-neema-2/” rel=”attachment wp-att-802″>

The government needs to do a little more and more about public universities here in Kenya, mainly because the best students usually end up in public university. Psychologists say that your environment shapes the way you think and your behavior. I believe so much can be done to restore back the once had glory of public universities in Kenya and restore confidence and pride among students in public university.

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