'We Paid for a Degree That Is Now Worth Less': Nairobi Students and Lecturers Speak Out as Universities Slide in Global Rankings

Three of Kenya's largest public universities dropped out of the top 1,000 in the 2026 QS World University Rankings released last month, the steepest single-year decline the country has recorded since the index began tracking Kenyan institutions in 2012. University of Nairobi, which once anchored the list as the country's flagship, now sits outside the top 1,200. Kenyatta University and Moi University fared worse. Behind the numbers is a story of gutted research budgets, unpaid lecturers and students sitting in lecture halls with broken furniture and no Wi-Fi.

The timing is brutal. Kenya is in its third year of a demanding fiscal consolidation programme tied to a 2023 IMF extended credit facility worth roughly $3.6 billion. The Ruto administration slashed the State Department for University Education's recurrent allocation by Ksh 4.2 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, according to budget documents tabled at the National Assembly in April. University councils were told to plug gaps through fees and commercial revenue — a tall order for institutions already struggling after the debt-financed expansion of free secondary education inflated enrolment without matching capitation grants.

'The Library Closed at 6pm Because They Can't Pay the Electricity Bill'

At the University of Nairobi's main campus on University Way, students in the Faculty of Engineering describe conditions that sound less like a research university and less like one fighting for global relevance. The Jomo Kenyatta Memorial Library, once open until midnight during examination periods, has been shutting its doors by 6pm since February because the university says it cannot reliably cover utility costs on its current allocation. A postgraduate student in the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering said she travels to the Kenya National Library on Ngong Road to print her thesis drafts because the campus printing centre ran out of toner in March and has not been restocked.

Lecturers at Kenyatta University's Kahawa campus, located off Thika Superhighway about 18 kilometres from the city centre, say the situation in research departments is worse. The university has not released internal research grants — budgeted at Ksh 180 million annually under its 2024-2028 strategic plan — since the first quarter of 2025. Several staff members in the sciences say equipment purchased under a European Union-funded STEM partnership in 2022 is sitting unused because there is no budget for reagents or maintenance contracts. The EU programme officially concluded in December 2025, and no successor funding has been secured.

Parents who sacrificed to put children through university are furious. At a parents' forum held at the Aga Khan University Hospital conference centre in Parklands last Saturday, one mother from Mathare said she had borrowed from a chama — a neighbourhood savings group — to pay her son's fees at the University of Nairobi, only to learn his department had cancelled two core units this semester due to a shortage of qualified lecturers. A boda boda rider from Eastleigh who has been paying fees in instalments since 2024 said his daughter was told her laboratory practicals would be deferred indefinitely. Neither could point to any official communication from the university explaining what was being done about it.

What Students and Staff Are Doing to Cope

Some lecturers have started moonlighting at private institutions like Strathmore University on Ole Sangale Road and Daystar University in Athi River to make up for salary delays that in some departments have stretched to six weeks. Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service data shows a 12 percent drop in first-choice applications to public universities for the 2026 intake compared to 2024, suggesting the reputational damage is already reshaping student choices.

The Kenya National Union of University Academics, KENUA, plans to deliver a petition to the Education Ministry offices on Jogoo House B on Harambee Avenue on July 14, demanding the immediate release of withheld research grants and a timeline for clearing salary arrears. University councils are expected to present emergency funding proposals to the Treasury before the mid-year budget review in August. Students and staff say they are not holding their breath — but they are watching who shows up and who does not.