Effects of strikes on Moi university strikes on students.

A majority of degrees awarded by Kenyan public universities, and private ones too take four years. However, in public universities most students spend significantly longer than four years due to strikes. Both lecturers’ strikes and students strikes. In my time at Moi university, lecturers’ strikes have done us dirty. It took me 12 months to complete two semesters. There was a lecturer’s strike for each of my two semesters in first year. On average students spend five to seven years completing a four-year degree in public institutions. This might also stretch into eight years for you to graduate. From missing marks to incompetent don’t care lecturers higher learning is turning into an extreme sport. A student’s strike did happen late last year. One might argue that it was a peaceful demonstration that turned into a riot because of law enforcers who do not know how handle protesters but that is a rant for another day. So, let us explore the ways in which these strikes affect us students.

Time is the number one thing affected by these strikes. As I said earlier eight months of first year turned into twelve. And a recent student’s strike is turning my eight-month third year into ten months. This is essential time that one is wasting instead of completing your degree and joining the work force. In most cases students do nothing with this time. They just sit around waiting for a memo recalling you back to school. Unlike other things wasted by these strikes, time cannot be recovered which is a huge disadvantage. Due to this, universities take up student’s holidays that are between academic years to try and catch up with academic work. This further disadvantages students as some use these holidays to gather finances for the upcoming school year i.e. school fee, rent and upkeep money.

Finances is another thing affected by strikes. In cases of student strikes, on recall the university requires that each student pay a fine. It varies in amount depending on the damage caused during the strike. This is money that one would have had to pay. What’s worse is that everyone is required to pay regardless whether you participated in the strike or not. Lecturers strikes on the other had significantly cost students rent money, hard earned rent money. Landlords around Moi university have also gotten into the habit of collecting a semester’s worth of rent at once. Once the strike happens all that money goes down the drain.

Students miss out on a lot of opportunities. These include jobs, enrolments in scholarship programs, skill building activities and more. Students cannot commit themselves to anything as these strikes, especially lecturers’, can be called off at a moment’s notice. It’s very inconvenient. Students can’t seek temporary employment. No one is looking to hire you until the strike is called off, which could be any time. Students cannot enrol in courses that require a time commitment as the strike can be over at any point in the course leading to more wastage of time and money.

Consistency in a student’s academic work is eliminated. The school work usually features related coursework over the years. These strikes can keep a student out of class for even up to a year. It would be very challenging to them to keep this work consistent. Concepts learnt can get eroded over time especially when one is outside the classroom. It does not help that these strikes may and do also occur mid semester when one is going through the course work. Once it’s over lecturers and students come back and rush through the remainder of the course work in order to beat the end of semester examinations and catch up with the new university calendar.

I used to wonder why students cry during their graduation days, now I don’t. It is not easy. I see nowadays the government is rushing student to get into schools after their national exams. Form ones join secondary schools in January while K.C.S.E results are released in the same year they were done. All this progress yet the ministry is doing nothing at the time wastage in public universities. Our counterparts in private universities are way ahead of us as these strikes rarely affect them.