[kictanet] Kenya's Silicon Savannah & the Need to do more (Evans Ikua)

[Matunda Nyanchama]

Evans,
You are right on the money.
A colleague has recently remarked that the process for introducing new courses or changing existing ones at many of our universities is very arduous and discouraging. Some just choose to give us.
As well, we should seriously consider how we deliver university education in the country. Many colleagues I meet hardly have time for research while largely focused on lectures and marking. The large class sizes don't help. .... UASU has in the past raised this and asked for more tutorial/assistantship support  so that lecturers focus more on course design/changes, course material & testing preparation, course quality assurance (design, testing/grading/etc.) and research while tutorial fellows/assistants would help with the grunt work: tutorials in small groups and marking.
And how about the "missing middle"? Mid-level colleges (polytechnics, etc.) that deal with deep hands on training! (Of course not the Nairobi Aviation types).
Baadaye.
From: Evans Ikua <ikua.evans at gmail.com>
To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Cc: Security List <security at lists.my.co.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya's Silicon Savannah & the Need to do more
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"The bad news is that higher learning in Kenya appears to be more of the
business of education than the quality of the programmes and relevance to
the market. There is a disconnect between what we are teaching and the
needs of local industry, such that universities stand accused of a failure
to proactively tune their programmes to market needs. The term ?yellow
notes? has been mentioned in relation to use of the same material from year
to year by some lecturers and professors, caring less for the dynamic
nature of knowledge.

ICT education and knowledge is a fast-paced affair. Knowledge and its
packaging evolves rapidly, as do the delivery modes. Academic institutions
must keep up with these changes if their graduates, especially in ICT ? a
key pillar to the President?s Digital Promise - have to find relevance in
the market."

I totally agree with you there. The way it works in our Universities is
that if teaching word processing pays and is easy to do, then that's what
they teach. They are under financial pressure but that is no excuse. If
they were to invest more in research, then they would come up with more
interesting things to teach, and these topics would then match with the
Industry demands. Otherwise we will never hear the last of the half-baked
graduate story. This is not easy to do, but it pays in the long run. But
how far can we see?

What we need to ask ourselves is this; what do the best Universities in the
world do that we don't? Why is everybody dying to go to MIT and Harvard?
When you look at the fees that these Universities charge, it shows that
they have enough money to invest in research, and the people who pay that
money can see the value that they get. For us, it's a vicious cycle of
mediocrity. If we continue teaching word processing in our Universities, we
will never produce the next Google or Facebook. The greatest IT companies
today came out University halls. What have our Universities produced
lately? From what I see, we are producing people who are very skilled in
implementing and supporting other people's technologies, and we are even
struggling with that!

Evans
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama at aganoconsulting.com
Agano Consulting Inc.;  www.aganoconsulting.com; Twitter: nmatunda;  Skype: okiambe
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