Seventh, the tragedy of our graduates will persist as long as government funding of universities and tertiary colleges will remain dismal.

The rain will persist provided our university lecturers will continue hopping from one university to another part-timing to make ends meet, instead of concentrating on quality teaching, research, innovation and production.

Prof, persuade the President of the Republic of Kenya, to consider having BIG FIVE and not just BIG FOUR, with education being one of the BIG FIVE, over and above the four that we know.

Quality education is the foundation for the BIG FOUR yet it misses among the BIG agenda. He is a listening and caring president.

Convince him to radically empower universities and colleges to focus on what they were meant to do – research, innovation and production.

Let the government pour more finances into these institutions for quality research and innovation.

Let government significantly improve the salary and remuneration of our lecturers so they will have no incentive to hop from college to college, part-timing, to make ends meet, while compromising the quality of education they impart.

This will also incentivise them to undertake more research and produce useful innovations.

Eighth, the tragedy of our graduates, is a tragedy of our students having to hustle for industrial attachment during their studies.

Ninth, the tragedy of our graduates, is that of brilliant novel ideas of our 8.4.4 graduates being preyed upon by unscrupulous but a few financially endowed individuals.

This exploitation won’t vanish provided we do not rethink our intellectual property protection system. We will lose it, when class eight or four graduates of 8.4.4 system, who attempt to invent aircraft, like those previously aired on our national media houses, once upon a time, have no one to support them to nurture the inventions into usable products and enable mass production.

Prof, tell the government to rethink our IP protection system to insulate great innovative ideas of Kenyans from falling into greedy hands.

Many companies in the US, such as Google, Microsoft etc have grown their multi-billion wealth through several patents of intangible goods such as computer algorithms and software technology, yet here in Kenya, our IP system seems to be skewed towards innovations of physical systems.

Yet, ironically, we claim to embrace that this is a knowledge economy. It’s no wonder, M-PESA, though invented in Kenya by a Kenyan, is patented elsewhere in the world.

Prof, like any other curriculum, 8.4.4 is anchored on Bloom’s Taxonomy theory of comprehension, analysis, synthesis, and application.

Thus, it’s not by curriculum design that graduates of the system are increasingly unable to apply their knowledge.

It’s courtesy of the nine tragic issues, among others, that the competitiveness of graduates is steadily waning.

This tragedy cannot be optimally fixed by a radical shift to another system of education.

And even in the absence of the nine issues, I contend that CBC will at best produce a skewed economy with good vocational tradesmen and women- people this country indeed needs critically, but with few innovators and system thinkers, that the economy needs in equal measure.

This is because, as I said, the best innovators are first generalists and system thinkers with a broad knowledge across subjects, but also specialised enough to turn an idea into reality.

While 8.4.4 was meant to foster generalist-specialists that are much needed today, CBC is favouring pure specialists whose survival in the modern and future world is and will be limited. Thus, my contention is that when all said and done, CBC is inferior to the 8.4.4 system, all other factors constant.

By Dr. Abiud Mulongo (Ph.D) is a Consultant Computer Systems Engineer.

Seventh, the tragedy of our graduates will persist as long as government funding of universities and tertiary colleges will remain dismal.

The rain will persist provided our university lecturers will continue hopping from one university to another part-timing to make ends meet, instead of concentrating on quality teaching, research, innovation and production.

Prof, persuade the President of the Republic of Kenya, to consider having BIG FIVE and not just BIG FOUR, with education being one of the BIG FIVE, over and above the four that we know.

Quality education is the foundation for the BIG FOUR yet it misses among the BIG agenda. He is a listening and caring president.

Convince him to radically empower universities and colleges to focus on what they were meant to do – research, innovation and production.

Let the government pour more finances into these institutions for quality research and innovation.

Let government significantly improve the salary and remuneration of our lecturers so they will have no incentive to hop from college to college, part-timing, to make ends meet, while compromising the quality of education they impart.

This will also incentivise them to undertake more research and produce useful innovations.

Eighth, the tragedy of our graduates, is a tragedy of our students having to hustle for industrial attachment during their studies.

Ninth, the tragedy of our graduates, is that of brilliant novel ideas of our 8.4.4 graduates being preyed upon by unscrupulous but a few financially endowed individuals.

This exploitation won’t vanish provided we do not rethink our intellectual property protection system. We will lose it, when class eight or four graduates of 8.4.4 system, who attempt to invent aircraft, like those previously aired on our national media houses, once upon a time, have no one to support them to nurture the inventions into usable products and enable mass production.

Prof, tell the government to rethink our IP protection system to insulate great innovative ideas of Kenyans from falling into greedy hands.

Many companies in the US, such as Google, Microsoft etc have grown their multi-billion wealth through several patents of intangible goods such as computer algorithms and software technology, yet here in Kenya, our IP system seems to be skewed towards innovations of physical systems.

Yet, ironically, we claim to embrace that this is a knowledge economy. It’s no wonder, M-PESA, though invented in Kenya by a Kenyan, is patented elsewhere in the world.

Prof, like any other curriculum, 8.4.4 is anchored on Bloom’s Taxonomy theory of comprehension, analysis, synthesis, and application.

Thus, it’s not by curriculum design that graduates of the system are increasingly unable to apply their knowledge.

It’s courtesy of the nine tragic issues, among others, that the competitiveness of graduates is steadily waning.

This tragedy cannot be optimally fixed by a radical shift to another system of education.

And even in the absence of the nine issues, I contend that CBC will at best produce a skewed economy with good vocational tradesmen and women- people this country indeed needs critically, but with few innovators and system thinkers, that the economy needs in equal measure.

This is because, as I said, the best innovators are first generalists and system thinkers with a broad knowledge across subjects, but also specialised enough to turn an idea into reality.

While 8.4.4 was meant to foster generalist-specialists that are much needed today, CBC is favouring pure specialists whose survival in the modern and future world is and will be limited. Thus, my contention is that when all said and done, CBC is inferior to the 8.4.4 system, all other factors constant.

By Dr. Abiud Mulongo (Ph.D) is a Consultant Computer Systems Engineer.