Why You’ll Never See Kenyan Professors Driving Expensive Cars…PhD is Useless!!!

In Kenya, you’ll hardly meet or spot a professor driving an expensive car-you will spot him with an old Peugeot 504.When I was naive, I used hold this believe that it’s their lifestyle, only to discover they are broke.

Before we say anything, here is how someone becomes a professor in Kenya:

1. A professor must have completed undergraduate course
2. Must be a Masters degree holder
3. A professor should have a minimum of 60 publication points since attaining Associate Professorship or equivalent, of which at least 40 should be from refereed scholarly journals.
4. The professor must also have supervised a minimum of five post-graduate students to completion and at least two students at doctoral level.
5. The scholar at this level must have attracted research or development funds as an Associate Professor or equivalent.
6. For a person to be appointed an Associate Professor, they must have earned a PhD or equivalent qualification from an accredited university.

To have all these qualifications, you must stay in the academic cycles for at least 25 years. All these years, the professor must seriously chew books, spend time in class, interact with students and publish as many papers as possible. This requires a lot of energy and dedication.

Now, let’s move to salaries. In 2017,the highest paid professor pockets Ksh400,000,which is money a human resource manager at a middle level company earns. Even if you save every penny, you won’t buy the following vehicles:

1. Mercedes E Class
2. Mercedes S Class
3. Range Rover
4. Toyota V8
5. Porsche Cayenne
6. Harrier
7. Lexus

In short, a professor can’t afford a car worth over Ksh4 million….he can’t fuel it!

I have always have issues with professors; why is it that almost all of them are polygamous?!!!It’s not uncommon to find all professors with a wife in almost every town. These people always think they are the best thing that ever happened on earth. They feel sweet, needed, entitled and final such that every skirt that passes by attracts their attention. This character has brought untold suffering to majority of them. Right now,if you meet a professor who is driving a Range Rover, that must be an MP,Governor,Senator or an expatriate.

One interesting observation is that despite them being on top in terms of education, they have poor financial management skills, which is why they live in abject poverty.

To most of us, university professors have never been our role models!