NAIROBI, Kenya – Loan defaults at the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) have soared to Sh42 billion, driven by a 40 per cent increase in the number of former university students failing to repay their dues over the past year.
Statistics reveal that 109,000 new accounts have fallen into default, pushing the total number of defaulters to 380,530 as of October 2025.
Surprisingly, elite professionals—including lawyers, doctors, engineers, and accountants—top the list of defaulters, while teachers remain the most reliable in meeting repayment obligations.
“Lawyers, doctors, engineers, and accountants are among the biggest loan defaulters, while teachers stand out as the most diligent in repaying their debts,” said HELB CEO Geoffrey Monari.
The rising default rate has strained HELB’s ability to support new and continuing students, forcing the agency to cut allocations for tuition and technical training loans.
In the 2024/25 financial year, over 163,000 students in public universities and TVET colleges were left without funding, amounting to a shortfall of Sh13.7 billion.
The funding gap is compounded by Kenya’s struggling economy. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), only 75,000 formal jobs were created last year, a sharp decline from 122,900 in 2023.
Meanwhile, 90 per cent of new jobs were in the informal sector, making it increasingly difficult for HELB to trace and recover loans from graduates engaged in informal work or self-employment.
HELB categorizes defaulters into three groups: those unable to pay due to lack of income, those willing but unsure how to repay, and those with means who refuse to pay.
The last group, including 124,640 individuals, has been listed with the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB), blocking them from accessing credit.
Of these, 83,571 are “hardcore defaulters,” having failed to repay for more than a decade and are now being pursued by debt collectors.
“The crème de la crème of society are not supporting HELB as a revolving fund,” Monari lamented.
With demand for student loans reaching Sh48.18 billion in 2024/25, HELB faces increasing pressure to sustain its revolving fund, which depends on repayments to support new applicants.
