Rogue medical colleges hire quack tutors, issue diplomas in two months

The midwife helping your wife to deliver, the lab technician testing your samples in hospital, or the caregiver looking after your ageing parent may have trained at a college where classes run for just two months.

These are findings of a survey by the Health Professions Oversight Authority (HPOA), which uncovered colleges employing tutors with the same qualifications as their students and admitting learners with widely inconsistent grades for identical courses.

The revelations emerged Tuesday during a joint meeting of the Health and Education Committees in the National Assembly, which brought together private health training colleges and academic regulators.

The Authority told MPs that preliminary findings from 152 institutions assessed showed that about 30 were not registered at all to offer medical training. Some institutions also did not provide students with supervised clinical practice before graduation. In other cases, training periods were inconsistent with stipulated requirements, with some offering diploma qualifications after as little as two months’ training.

Jackson Kioko, HPOA chief executive, warned that these findings undermine competence and compromise patient safety.

“When you go on the ground, you find things are completely different. Some institutions offer the same diploma in two months, while others take three years. Entry grades vary from D+ to D–, and many applicants do not even know the real requirements,” Dr Kioko said.

He argued that misconduct has been driven by the commercialisation of medical training. The Authority is now proposing laws to establish a national list of priority health courses that institutions must follow before launching any programme. “Let us not juggle courses simply because training has become a business. We are imparting knowledge to people who will treat us tomorrow. Training must be guided by national needs,” Dr Kioko said.

Ruben Waswa, organising secretary of the Association of Medical Training Institutions of Kenya (AMTIK), dismissed the claims, noting the institutions cited were not part of their association. “We only deal with institutions registered by the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Authority (TVETA),” Waswa told MPs.

The HPOA has asked Parliament to compel all medical colleges to sign hospital-based training agreements to ensure students undergo structured clinical practice.

Waswa also criticised regulatory bodies for discriminating against private colleges, citing overlapping authorities, punitive accreditation fees, restrictive course approvals, and laws favouring public institutions, such as the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC). “Private colleges are subjected to overlapping mandates from about 12 regulatory bodies, each operating under separate Acts of Parliament. There is no chain of command or scalar system for communicating government policy,” Waswa said.

He added that public institutions often bypass regulatory hurdles, while private colleges face recurring assessments, multiple fees, and restrictive practices.

Addressing these accusations, KNQA Director-General Alice Kande insisted recognition depends solely on meeting statutory standards.

“The national qualifications database contains qualifications from all institutions meeting statutory and quality assurance requirements. This applies equally to public and private institutions,” Kande said, noting that 184 qualification-awarding bodies operate in the country, including 65 private institutions such as the Kenya Red Cross Training Institute. “The claim that KNQA refuses to recognise private colleges is inaccurate. Recognition is based on conformity to the national qualifications framework, not ownership status,” she added.

Kande urged MPs to harmonise accreditation and registration fees, describing the current system as arbitrary and discriminatory. “A certificate is a certificate. A diploma is a diploma. A degree is a degree. There should not be variations in fees,” she said.

To reduce duplication and overlapping oversight, HPOA proposed joint assessments of health-training institutions by regulators, rather than separate inspections.