By Abdirisaaq
NAIROBI (SaxafiNews.com) – Mount Kenya University will set up a campus in Somaliland in October making it the first Kenyan institution of higher learning to venture into the country.
The chairperson of the institution Mr Simon Gicharu said that the private university has raised funds from its shareholders and school fees to fund the project to a tune Sh500 million which will be scaled to Sh1 billion.
“In the next one month we are going to start that particular campus in Somaliland,” said Mr Gicharu. The University will compete with locals such as Hargeisa and Amoud Universities.
The institution, which has raised a student population of 32,000 students, has witnesses a rapid growth thanks to high demand for higher learning opportunities. The institution has however come under sharp criticism for running the risk of offering poor quality learning due to rapid expansion and inadequate facilities.
It has opened 12 campuses in Kenya and one in Rwanda since its launch in 1996 making it one of the fastest growing universities in the region.
Mr Gicharu said the institution will start with a student population of 100 as it targets to grow the number to 1000 in the near term.
High demand for higher learning and strained public universities have led to the rapid expansion of universities across the country making analysts to question the value of the learning delivered by the institutions.
There has also been an upsurge of new private and church based universities and affiliate universities.
Commission for Higher Education (CHE) last Friday, allowed two new private universities to offer degree programmes, in a move that increased the number of universities to 36.
Riara University, which is located on Mbagathi Way and Pioneer International University in Ngara were issued with letters of interim authority
