The University of Nairobi (UON) has deregistered 30,000 students from its record in the latest mass cleaning exercise conducted at the institute.
According to UON Vice-Chancellor Prof Stephen Gitahi Kiama, the exercise targeted students who stayed at the institute longer, those who had their studies postponed for longer, and those who were serving suspensions.
Speaking to Business Daily on Friday, March 4, Kiama said that the clean-up drive has reduced the capacity of UON students to 50,000. However, he added that the institution gave a chance to the unregistered students to take admission again.
Kiama said, “We started that exercise in the middle of last year and we went through the Senate to name people who stayed longer, who are not active and by the time we were closing the year in December.” By then we had pulled out a little over 30,000.”
“We have to ensure that we have active students. If you are not active we should remove you from our system so that we can focus on those who have registered and are in school,” Prof Kiama said.
Defending the move, the Vice-Chancellor said that having the right number of active students helps the institute in proper planning.
Some students register, take a course then disappear but do not inform us of their whereabouts. We are countering this system because we need to plan for active students,” he remarked.
In 2020 the UoN Senate allowed university administrations to deregister students in violation of their education deadlines.
A memo issued on August 26, 2020 indicated that the Senate has approved the Guidelines for Student Progress, effective September 2020. These guidelines are provided for the termination, progress and de-registration of the students.
UON is grappling with financial issues, with indications that it has missed some deductions such as the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF), the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and even payments to its employees.
The situation was further worsened by the government’s decision in which they had stopped the funds given to the institute for the students who stayed ahead of time.
The University Funding Board (UFB) withheld more than Ksh5 billion, forcing UoN to cancel the registration of 30,000 students.
