It’s been eleven years since I first heard that the subjects I teach are useless to the market. The impact of that statement took me down an abusive relationship with the market for a few years, during which I tried very hard to please the market. We got guest lectures, a Creatives Academy workshop that trended on twitter and won a BAKE award, three visiting professors, and fairly good job placements for our students. We were visible on social media. But it was never enough. The market still said we didn’t matter.

I eventually decided that I better find out what arts and humanities departments outside Kenya are doing. I found out that they were fighting the same battles as us, and that they had named the monster they were fighting. It was called neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the idea that the society works best if every social relationship is treated as an economic transaction. Teachers now don’t teach students; they serve clients.

​Through the Higher Education Loans Board, the Kenya government has been lending loans to students for their university education fees, and using predatory, private sector practices to recover the money. Within a year of graduation, students have to repay the loan at 5,000 shillings a month, regardless if they have an income or not. Worse, HELB has partnered with the Credit Information Bureau to share information of defaulters.

​For graduates, HELB loans are a trail of tears. 

In much of the research on neoliberalism and universities, Western scholars express concern for part time lecturers. They say that the casualization of academic labor means that the number of permanent faculty positions reduces, which in turn affects the quality of research output because part-time lecturers don't have the stability to engage in research. It also has an impact on student mentoring because part time lecturers are paid only to teach.

​But what happened in Kenya?

The Sidebar conversation on NTV last Wednesday came as a surprise for many. Many did not expect that a debate on education could be emotionally charged and, of course, I came under attack for being emotional. But the conversation was also a surprise for me, because with my conversations about marketization and neoliberalism, I thought that any education expert (which I do not claim to be), would be fairly familiar with global debates on the neoliberal tropes the Government of Kenya is using to justify the curriculum change.
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Nevertheless, the biggest lesson I learned from the NTV discussion is that the new curriculum was written on the basis of assumptions that the Government thought (or did not know) were not ideologically neutral. Here are some of them: