[Note: This is the full text of my reply to Dr. Franceschi's article, which appeared in the Daily Nation of last Friday, March 20, 2015. I am publishing it here because the newspaper has not published it online as at the time of posting it on my blog. Besides this note, the only change that I have made since I posted the original via Disqus is correcting Dr. Franceschi's name, which I had mis-spelt]
Several
of the points that Dr. Franceschi makes deserve making, and it is important for
the core issue that he has raised to be publicly debated. However, there are
important reasons why "research", as he seems to define it, is not
going on at the tempo and intensity that he, and we all, may wish it to.
Delving into the reasons why will have to await another time. Suffice it to say
that not all research is, or needs to be, "big bucks" activity -- or
donor funded. After all, external donors have their (well known) preferences,
and even favorites. And potential local donors cannot be counted on, since they
are (too) engrossed in ethnically-tinged politics, as well as more grandiose
(and outlandish) money-making schemes than they have already mastered.
What I
really wanted to say is this: Dr. Franceschi is engaging in gross exaggeration
of the facts as we know them. How many dons does he really know who are in two
full-time jobs? My bet is -- really none. If he insists he does, and if they
are employees of public universities, then it is his civic duty to report -- or
name and shame -- them, because they are involved in an illegality. I simply
don't know of any. More importantly, it is impossible to have two such
full-time teaching jobs -- unless one of the jobs is a sinecure. Full-time
means a minimum of an eight-hour per day obligation/availability (involving a
range of activities) during the work-week. I don't know of any university with
classes beyond 8.30 pm or 9 during the work-week. So "two full-time"
is a definitional impossibility.
What is
common, as I know, is that an individual may hold a full-time job at one
institution, and serve part-time at another, or even others. Alternatively,
they may be on sabbatical leave from one, and 'temporarily' serving full-time
at another. Though I have myself never engaged in such activity, let me say
that without such individuals Strathmore University itself would probably have
taken much longer than it has to get to where it in now. Nor would USIU have.
These are, incidentally, the leading private universities in Kenya. They have
both tapped massively into the scholastic reservoir of the University of
Nairobi.
