Higher Education Loans Board-HELB: The

present and the future

Since 1995, Higher Education Loans Board-HELB has disbursed
loans amounting to 45.1 Billion. I say disburse because it is the term that
HELB uses to refer to their loans. In my English dictionary, the word
Disburse means, to pay out money, especially from a fund. It is in this
ideation that I have realized that HELB operates like a charitable
organization. Upon scanning various news, media outlets, downloads and
other materials, there is nowhere HELB informs the beneficiary, another
term they use, to advise them on the different uses of the money they get.
I bet most of us who went to school and used HELB to pay fees have no
qualms with whatever they say, beneficiary or not. At present, HELB has a
book debt of defaulters in excess of 8 billion. By defaulter I mean,
Nonpayer. Therefore, those servicing their loans are not included in this
book. Those in school are not included in this list. This means, there are
about 13 billion loans waiting maturity and about 14 billion loans
currently under service.
Last year alone, the demand for loans was at 14 billion, which
translates to around 42 billion in three years, a figure closer to what HELB
has disbursed over its almost 20 years of service. This is not a problem. It
can be argued that there is no cause for worry since HELB funds formal

employees to join the job market. That is a sound argument. Annually,

HELB disburses loans to about 100000 students, in the past, graduate
uptake for firms and government has been good. Rarely did graduates
graduate and celebrated their second graduation anniversary without a
formal job. With formal jobs, graduates repaid their loans in 5 years at
most paying around 3000-4000 per month.
Today, the graduate uptake program is almost half, what it was five
years ago. The campaign against graduates is active with various studies
purporting to support that graduates are half-baked. The problem with this
assumption is that firms are choosing to ignore graduates when looking for
employees. Most jobs in Kenya are mainly routine jobs. Banks,
information and technology companies, investment firms, TSC, real estate
firms and such firms are the only ones hiring graduates really. Most of the
graduates funded by HELB are from poor families and backgrounds. It is
certain that these people went to district eve not ranked schools in their
villages. The best grade they attained was a B+. They are sponsored by
public universities to take up BA and BSC general, which are umbrella
courses that take up over 40% of the graduates funded by HELB.
It is a headache for a child from a poor background to study law. As
it would be noted, the law college in Kenya requires a quarter million in
fees. They cannot do health science or engineering courses since they

require grades they could not attain in their Government forsaken district
and county level schools.
I wish to ask academicians, how do you bake a BA graduate? A BA
or a BSC general student will never, even in a million years be fully baked.
Merely because they are foundational courses. Elsewhere in the world, they
are taken as foundational courses before one majors into a profession of
choice, for example, law, international affairs, developmental studies etc.
who hires BA and BSC graduates in Kenya today? Banks and anyone else
who wants routine job employees. How many can they take at any given
time? They can only do so much. A while ago, banks were competing on
who pays better, today; they are competing on who is paying poorer.
Graduates in <5 years bracket of experience are earning an average of 4050, 000 paper month for main banks which are around 15. The rest are
paying 15-35, 000.
I think this is decent pay in Kenya. While firms used to hire directly,
today, they use agencies and HR firms to do shortlisting for them, not
because they do not have an HR department, but because there are
reasons. One of the reason is that it is easy to receive 100, 000 application
for a bank teller job position even if you indicated that the salary is 20, 000
to lower expectations. For those who graduated in the past five years, the
average wage for them is around 25-35, 000. This makes it impossible for

any beneficiary to contribute the standard 4, 000 per month and instead,
many opt to pay between 1000 and 2000 per month, which will take at
least 6 years to pay the loan off.
Since, the number of beneficiaries is doubling is not more, for
example, in 2007, Joint Admission Board JAB now KUCCPS admitted a
paltry 8, 600 students. In 2009, it admitted more 21, 000, there is more to
this discussion. If I was to look at the governments priorities, it is clear
that the focus is not to make Kenya a developing nation. Look at the
money pumped to county governments without any cap on how much
they can put on development. Look at how much is pumped in LAPSSET.
See how much money is put on education. It is clear that, the government
is not creating jobs but rather creating a supply for graduates for the
capitalists to exploit. Last year, KCB group made profits in excess of 23
billion. Other private firms like the Sarova group, Brookside, ASL and
others maintained profits of such nature despite the growing wage fallout.
KCB group and Barclays bank, for example, have opted into offering
contractual terms for entry-level positions. To make matters worse, they do
not retain them in their books since they are represented by an agency.
This level of outsourcing allows firms to get cheap and readily trained
labour. What about the labourers? They stay for months and months
signed under these agencies waiting for an opportunity for another short

stint. Although companies want to hire routine job workers, there are
obvious advantages of doing better. Lately, CPA, ACCA have taken up
most of the routine jobs in firms. CPA, for example, is a bulging entity
with billions in revenues. CPA graduates are more marketable than most
degree courses. For example, doing computer related courses is causing
many heartaches as most firms rarely do anything requiring their services.
Business related courses also lag behind CPA including BCOM
whether it is accounting option or not. Evidently, firms are looking for a
CPA graduate with university education. They pay for the CPA, not the
degree. A renegotiation to ensure that the course is admittable for public
universities can enhance the marketability of those BA. Perhaps it can
make them partially baked. Other skills required to move the country
forward are medical services.
Dental solutions are supposed to be made a national disaster in
Kenya. I must confess that most of the people who study BA and BSC
general are qualified to join Kenya Medical Training College KMTC and
undertake various health and administrative courses.
Let us just think about it. If HELB continues to disburse the 14
billion required for the next 5 years and the status quo is maintained, the
debt for the loan will grow to over 70 billion assuming that annually,

around 60% of the loan disbursed and mature is recovered. By then, HELB
will be one of the biggest accountant headaches for the government. The
free primary school will be gaping, and free secondary school program is
bulging together ensuring that the country maintained wages of around 15,
000 for graduates. At that time, less than 20% will be able to pay their
loans. Recently, HELB introduced that firms private or public required
HELB clearance, which, by the way, costs 1000 assuming that you are not
travelling to apply and to collect the certificate. It is good, but are they out
of their minds? You cannot find and job and the person who wants to hire
you, they prevent him from hiring you by bringing another administrative
bottleneck? That is preposterous.
The number one consideration when awarding a loan to anyone is
the ability to pay. If you are given a loan to study a course that has no
market value, are you even entitled to pay the person who paid for that
useless course? Absolutely not.

My immediate solution is in here.

The government to hire only HELB beneficiaries only in all entry
level positions from 2016. I do not need to expound on this.
The government to stop funding BA and BSC general courses for the

next five years. In its place, all those admitted taking BA and BSC General
to apply for technical courses in KMTC. KASNEB to be entrenched in
university education. All government trainings to be done in universities
and be offered to these university students. Those remaining to take up
professional courses like counselling psychology, languages and such
actionable courses. Sociology should officially be abolished in our
university. Social work and communication skills in our universities as a
major is a mockery when these people can barely do simple emergency
procedure to a chocking kid or write an ethical piece respectively. Courses
in international relations ought to be relooked and rethought.
I must note that KMTC has one of the most corrupt admission
formula. At least we know JAB admissions have not been bungled yet so
will expect that to be seamless. The fact that most parents cannot afford
the over 40, 000 fees required by good secondary schools, do not expect
them suddenly to afford the 60, 000+ per semester paid at KMTC. The
good thing is that, even if you fund them via HELB, they will repay it
almost immediately. Health professionals are needed. People are losing
their lives because of dental complications, childbirth, malaria, typhoid and
such diseases that have cures.
I am inclined to make all the 12 units studied in CPA and CPS to be
offered in universities. Abolish the BA General and form the Bachelor of

Arts business or bachelor of business (general). In this course, 12 units of

either CPA or CPS to be mandatory, marketing courses, customer end and
HR functions courses, entrepreneurship, and other electives based on
sectoral preferences. These sectoral preferences can be banking,
manufacturing, transport, agribusiness and such. This person can be
employed directly by a bank to do actionable things from school including
and not limited to all business functions from marketing and human
resources. This course to be offered in public universities only to ensure
that the market will be skewed towards employing these people. This way,
they are sure to repay loans and develop the country. I am thinking, what
can a sociologist do in Kenya? Who needs social theories when the existing
ones are doing horribly? Do jobless people require the services of
psychologists and counsellors? They cannot afford for the services.
Ensure that no one studies economics as a BA major. It is supposed
to be offered together with an actionable profession like statistics and
finance. This is because there is no market value for economists in Kenya.
The little that the market can take ought to be known. They think that
when they graduate, they are any better from their BA counterparts. Let
NGOs train their staff. After all, they make it impossible. Especially for the
international ones, for those without international accreditation, which
most poor people cannot afford, make an entry into their workforce
impossible. This means local ones that depend on internship, attachment
and voluntary may hire you. If you are lucky, you will be paid 25, 000 if

not 15, 000. These organizations bring the demand for sociology, social
work and other less actionable BA general courses popular.
This way you are sure that, upon completion of one's studies, the
loan will be repaid. Otherwise, we are headed for a situation where, over
100000 graduates will be pumped into the economy that has no use for
them with a 200000 dead loan hanging on their necks. For the past 5
years, online jobs have kept the debacle low enough but now that the
industry is by surety saturated and the wages too going down, there is a
clear sign that the worst is on the way.

Food for thought

As the rural-urban migration continues to rise every day, the wages
continue to fall, and the competition for labour intensifies, the demand for
housing in towns intensifies, affordability becomes a problem. Families are
residing in one bedroom flat houses, single rooms and bedsitters. Do not
think that they do not have families; they have young families they are
raising. Expect their libido to be good, common sense and expect them to
quench it in their small and congested houses. We can want to instil
discipline, morality and the sexual livelihood information to our kids, but
they interact with kids used to peeping at parents. You may be rich and
take your kids anywhere you want, but eventually, that kid will interact in
one way with the Kenyan community that is literally losing family and
moral values. Let us all be responsible, what demeans me, belittles you in
some way.