public by day, private by night: examining the private lives of kenya's public universities

Public by Day, Private by Night: examining theprivate lives of Kenya’s public universitiesejed_1519 213..227

Gerald Wangenge-Ouma

IntroductionThe history of higher education in Africa is founded on missionary work andprivate initiatives. Some of the earliest higher learning institutions started as privateentities but later became public universities, including Fourah Bay College inSierra Leone, established by the Church Missionary Society in 1827, and theSouth African College (which later became the University of Cape Town), estab-lished in 1829 by influential citizens who sought better-quality education for theirchildren (Fehnel, 2006). In addition to private institutions that later becamepublic, such as Fourah Bay College and the South African College, Africa hasprivate institutions that have remained private since their foundation. Examplesinclude Kenya’s earliest private higher education institutions, St. Paul’s UnitedTheological College (1930), Kenya Highlands Bible College (KHBC) (1953), andScott Theological College (STC) (1962), all of which were founded as denomi-national seminaries.

Public universities began to emerge in the last years of colonialism and prolif-erated in the post-independence period. For example, while Kenya, Uganda, andTanzania each had only one public university in 1970 they now respectively boastseven, five, and seven. Nigeria has probably seen the most dramatic rise in thenumber of public universities (both state and federal): starting from only one, theUniversity of Ibadan, in 1948, the country now has 62 state and federal universities(Nigeria University Council, 2009).

Private universities have also proliferated.With only four private institutions in1962, Kenya now has about 23 private universities. In Tanzania, the number ofprivate higher education institutions has grown from three in 1996 to about 21 in2006. In Nigeria, the number of licensed private universities grew from three in1999 to 34 in 2007 (Nigeria University Council, 2009). In Uganda, the number ofprivate tertiary institutions has grown from one in 1988 to about 31 in 2009(National Council for Higher Education, 2009).

Starting in the 1990s, the strict divide between public and private universitiesbegan to blur. As the presence of private forces became stronger in public highereducation, there emerged a kind of ‘fused’ (Levy, 2006) public-private configura-tion. Public universities in countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Mozam-bique, and Zimbabwe have established what may essentially be described as privatewings. The simultaneously public and private nature of such universities, particu-larly in Kenya, will be the primary focus of this analysis.

From State Control to Market SteeringFor most African countries, the period immediately following independence(1960s and 1970s) was characterised by a relatively strong state-centred approachto social provisioning and control of economic processes.The State’s involvementin economic processes took various forms, including ownership of productive

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resources, the establishment of state-owned enterprises, and the minimisation ofthe functions of the market. It played an equally strong role in providing socialservices such as healthcare and education. In fact, for a long time, most socialservices were provided almost exclusively by the State, leading to the dominance ofthe public sector in the social and economic lives of many countries.

Higher education was another social service that was controlled predomi-nantly by the public sector during this period. In line with this overall state-centred development approach, universities were established as developmentinstitutions, their primary mandate being to help emerging postcolonial States tomodernise, expedite person power formation, and address basic existential chal-lenges faced by local populations (Wangenge-Ouma, 2008a; Mamdani, 2008;Yesufu, 1973). Higher education was thus informed by the public-good model,devoted to functions such as ‘the development of individual learning and humancapital, the socialisation and cultivation of citizens and political loyalties and thepreservation of knowledge and the fostering of other legitimate pursuits of thenation state’ (Gumport, 2000, p. 74).

Socialist countries such as Tanzania and Mozambique regarded higher educa-tion institutions as instruments for the realisation of their Socialist experiments.According to Samora Machel, the first president of Mozambique, Eduardo Mond-lane University (UEM), which was then the country’s only university, wasexpected to serve the public good. This entailed, among other things, providingaccess to higher education for factory workers, peasants, and the children of theveterans of the independence struggle (Machel, 1976). The University was alsoexpected to produce the homem novo, the new ‘man’ (Centro Nacional de Docu-mentaçao e Informaçao de Moçambique, 1978), defined as a ‘man [sic] freed fromobscurantism and capable of assimilating critically the political, scientific, technicaland cultural knowledge that is transmitted to him. A New Man who, above all,loves his country, who respects his work, particularly manual work and whopossesses the fundamentals of a socialist consciousness’ (CEDIMO, 1978, p. 18).In this ideological context, these roles seemed too important to be entrusted toprivate higher education institutions. The leaders of these countries did not trustthe market to deliver the kind of national socio-political and economic engineeringthey envisioned. Thus, state-led development was regarded as best suited toaddress the many challenges these countries were experiencing. The political andsocial environment in which higher education was embedded was not generallyconducive for private provision.

In addition to these ideological reasons, it could also be argued that therelatively underdeveloped (higher) education markets in these emerging politicaleconomies were not strong incentives for private sector participation. For manysub-Saharan countries, demand for higher education in the period immediatelyfollowing independence was generally low, in part because primary and secondaryeducation were underdeveloped prior to independence. For instance, in 1964,when Kenya achieved political independence, only 571 students were enrolled atwhat was then the University College Nairobi. They included undergraduate,postgraduate, and diploma students (Wangenge-Ouma, 2008a). In 1962, theFederal University of Cameroon had only 210 students, while the National Uni-versity of Rwanda had 130 (Makulu, 1971). Taking these figures as crude indica-tors of demand, one might conclude that the market for higher education was notinviting for private providers.

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Several factors made the state-centred development model, however well inten-tioned it may have been, increasingly ill adapted to contemporary problems. Thisresulted in economic stagnation and extreme inefficiency in social provisioning.Basic inefficiencies in public service delivery were compounded by a rising demandfor services. Beginning in the early 1980s, many African countries commencedpublic sector restructuring, economic liberalisation, and other policy reforms, all ofwhich were characterised by a recasting of the State’s role in the economic sphereand social provisioning (Young, 1991; Nwankwo & Richards, 2001). Privatisationbecame a flagship policy instrument for the restructuring process.

Young (1991, p. 50) broadly describes privatisation as ‘referring to a process bywhich the state’s role within the economy is circumscribed while at the same timethe scope for the operation of private capital is deliberately extended’. Thus, theterm ‘privatisation’ describes ‘an array of actions designed to broaden the scope ofprivate sector market activity, or the assimilation by the public sector of efficiencyenhancing techniques generally employed by the private sector’ (Adams et al.,1996 in Nwankwo & Richards, 2001, p.167). With regard to social provisioning,privatisation may entail the following: private ownership and management withgovernment regulation; private ownership with government regulation and gov-ernment funding to subsidise low-income clients, for example, through a vouchersystem or state-subsidised loans to students in private universities; and governmentownership, with contracts to the private sector for the management and operationof the service (Blank, 2000).

The economic reforms initiated by many African countries were a product ofboth locally and externally driven pressures. It is useful to briefly map thesepressures, since they had a direct impact on the opening of the higher educationmarket to private sector participation, as well as the adoption of various market-like mechanisms in the public sector.

Towards the end of the 1970s, many African countries experienced severeeconomic setbacks. Several commentators, among them Young (1991), Oanda,Chege & Wesonga (2008), Aina, Chachage & Annan-Yao (2004), Aseka (2005),and Wangenge-Ouma (2008a), observed that the economic adversity of the late1970s through the 1980s coupled with significant aid dependence exposed manyAfrican governments to ‘pressures from both multilateral financial institutions andwestern bilateral aid agencies to initiate a substantial redefinition of the state’s rolewithin the economy’ (Young, 1991, p.51). The World Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund were the key multilateral financial institutions responsible for theredefinition of the State’s role in the economies of most sub-Saharan Africancountries through the imposition of structural adjustment programmes and theirattendant ‘privatisation ramifications, as a condition for debt relief or debt repay-ment rescheduling’ (Nwankwo & Richards, 2001, p. 168).

As Blank (2000) points out, the wave of privatisation and deregulation effortsin other sectors of the economy spilled over into other areas where such reformscould be applied. Higher education was one such area. The optimism and growthin the 1960s and 1970s were generally accompanied by rising budget allocationsfor higher education, thanks to growing social demand coupled with a belief in theeconomic benefits of investing in human capital. In the 1980s, budgets stagnatedor declined as governments in many parts of the continent grappled with majorproblems such as political and economic crises or structural adjustments(Woodhall, 2001). During this period, the World Bank commissioned studies on

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investment returns in education which advanced the controversial claim thathigher education in Africa was a poor investment priority (Psacharopoulos,Tan &Jimenez, 1986).TheWorld Bank and other supranational institutions responded tothese studies by shifting their priorities and focus from higher education to primaryeducation (Woodhall, 2001; World Bank, 1986; 1988).

Partly as a result of these studies, and because of strong pressure to controlcosts in public budgets, education became an important site for structuraladjustment. As a result, many African governments had to adopt policy reformsthat lowered public spending on higher education, substantially increasedstudent fees, and pushed for greater efficiency and privatisation (Ouma, 2007).The World Bank’s thinking regarding adjustments in higher education, especiallyin sub-Saharan Africa, is captured in a 1988 publication Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies for Adjustment, Revitalization, and Expansion, whichclaimed that the cost of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa was needlesslyhigh and that governments could not be expected to substantially increase theresources they devoted to it. Cost-sharing (cost recovery) was the most impor-tant policy recommendation (prescription) made by this policy paper. Africangovernments were called upon to ‘relieve the burden on public sources of financ-ing by increasing the participation of beneficiaries and their families’ (WorldBank, 1988, p. 77). To remedy ‘high levels’ of government subsidies in highereducation, the paper recommended that access for part-time, fee-paying studentsbe expanded. Governments were also required to expand opportunities andimprove quality by privatising institutions and functions. The paper set theoverall tone for adjustments in public university education in sub-SaharanAfrica. It not only placed public higher education financial reforms withinbroader national policy efforts to liberalise, privatise, and decentralise, but alsoactively encouraged the participation of private providers and the introduction ofmarket mechanisms into public service provision.

This section does not intend to claim that the World Bank and other supra-national institutions such as the IMF were responsible for the privatisation ofhigher education in Africa, despite the fact that they influenced certain forms ofprivatisation of higher education on the continent. As aforementioned, privateprovision of higher education in Africa has its roots in the late 19th century, longbefore the establishment of the World Bank and its involvement in education onthe continent. The key purpose here is rather to describe a context in whichprivatisation entered the ‘order of discourse’ in higher education, particularly insub-Saharan Africa. This context is defined by the increasing reliance of publicpolicy makers in sub-Saharan Africa on private markets and the market mecha-nism for the provision of social services, a phenomenon linked to the broadermacro-economic reforms that began in the 1980s. It should be emphasised thatthis reliance on the market mechanism and on privatisation was not specific tosub-Saharan Africa, but was a global trend that began in the last quarter of the20th century.

Reliance on private markets and the market mechanism has spawned severalforms of privatisation in higher education that are not unlike the macro-economicreforms discussed above. Holzhacker et al. (2009) identified three forms of priva-tisation in higher education. These are: the emergence of private institutions, inother words, non-state-owned institutions that could either be proprietary ornon-proprietary, or could assume other forms of identity in terms of ownership;



privatisation as cost-sharing; and privatisation of services at public institutions inwhich institutions outsource to private agencies the delivery of various services,such as vending, food, laundry, travel, bookstores, entertainment, and health care.Holzhacker et al’s (2009) characterisation of higher education privatisation there-fore refers to the emergence of new types of higher education institutions owned bynon-state agencies, as well as to the emergence and institutionalisation of market-oriented behaviour and dispositions by state-owned universities.The focus of thisarticle is on the cost-sharing form of privatisation. But as the discussion will show,‘cost-sharing’ per se does not adequately capture the changes in Kenya’s publichigher education, where public universities are essentially establishing ‘privatewings,’ including campuses for full-fee-paying students, franchising, and exclusiveprogrammes for full-fee-paying students. It is a form of academic capitalism orentrepreneurialism.

Policies Driving Higher Education Privatisation in KenyaThe previous section provided a macro context against which privatisation wasintroduced into the economies of African countries, particularly sub-Saharan ones,including Kenya. The introduction and legitimatisation of privatisation in botheconomic management and social provisioning is the broader context againstwhich the logic of privatisation was introduced in higher education.Thus, policiesdriving higher education privatisation in Kenya as in other parts of the world werelargely influenced by the growing relevance of markets in higher education policy,as traditional models of publicly financed higher education proved unsustainable,particularly in the face of rising demand.

It could be argued that the first attempt to introduce the ‘market mechanism’into Kenya’s public higher education was a student loan scheme rolled out in the1974–75 academic year as part of the 1974–78 Development Plan (Republic ofKenya, 1973). This loan scheme was introduced in the context of a free highereducation régime coupled with increasing student numbers, from 571 in 1964 to3563 in 1973 (Wangenge-Ouma, 2006), and the economic difficulties the countrywas experiencing in the early 1970s, caused in part by rising oil prices in 1973.Quoting Wagacha & Ngugi (1999), Otieno (2010) reports that the Kenyaneconomy declined from a real GDP growth rate of more than 8% annually between1963 and 1972 to 4% annually the following year. The student loan schemeintroduced in the academic year 1974–75 could thus be considered as the Kenyangovernment’s first attempt to transfer the cost of higher education to students.However, these loans were meant to cover only personal expenses; the governmentcontinued to fully fund tuition and capitation. Even though higher educationremained tuition-free, this loan scheme marked the advent of cost-sharing inKenya’s higher education system.

The second set of policy initiatives leading to the privatisation of Kenya’spublic higher education system is intricately linked to the discrediting of thepublic model for financing higher education as the State’s involvement in socialprovisioning was de-emphasised in the face of high pressure on local policy fromsupranational institutions such as the World Bank. The Kenyan government dis-continued tuition-free higher education through Sessional Paper No. 6 of 1988(Republic of Kenya, 1988).

The discontinuation of tuition-free higher education had been signalled earlierin Sessional Paper No. 1 of 1986 on economic management (Republic of Kenya,



1986), which mentioned the need to ‘put [a] tight limit on ministry expenditures,which will grow by less than 2 per cent a year net of inflation through 1988–89’(Republic of Kenya, 1986, p. 30).The Sessional Paper (No. 1 of 1986) identified theministries of education and health as targets for reduced recurrent expenditures:‘each will be reduced gradually as a share of total recurrent expenditures . . . ’(Republic of Kenya, 1986, p. 30). Even though tuition-free higher education wasofficially abolished in 1988, cost-sharing was introduced only in 1992. It requiredstudents or their parents to cover both tuition and personal expenses. The intro-duction of cost-sharing was accompanied by the abolition of all personal allow-ances previously enjoyed by university students. In addition to the difficulteconomic conditions that the country was experiencing at the time, the implemen-tation of cost-sharing policies was spurred by the conditions of an emergencyWorld Bank loan of USD 55 million to finance public universities (Kiamba, 2005),as well as the overall context of structural adjustment programmes.

Wangenge-Ouma (2008a) argued that the introduction of cost-sharing in 1992did not entail any major financial responsibilities for students and their parents.Thenew cost-sharing system came with heavy subsidies for students and low-level costrecovery. Students admitted through the Joint Admissions Board (which admitsstudents applying for a government subsidy to cover costs such as tuition andaccommodation) receive significant subsidies and pay uniform, state-determinedfees, which were for a long time set at Kshs 16,000 (approx. USD 178). Givengovernment-subsidised students’ limited contribution to the cost of their education,coupled with limited budgetary support from the public treasury, Kenya’s publicuniversities experienced destabilising resource-dependence difficulties.The govern-ment responded to demands for more higher education funding by pressuringpublic universities to seek funding from elsewhere; in other words, the market.

As demand for higher education increased and state financial support declined,public universities’ ability to function as effective institutions was in jeopardy.TheAuditor-General declared several of them to be technically insolv’ent (Wangenge-Ouma, 2008a).Through policy papers and graduation addresses at public univer-sities, among other forums, the Kenyan government exhorted public universities toseek more funding from market sources (Wangenge-Ouma 2008a). For instance,the government’s 1997–2010 Master Plan (Republic of Kenya, 1998, p. 110) calledupon public universities to:

develop non-public sources of their revenues, including income-generatingactivities (such as returns from research and consultancies with industry andemployers, services to the community, agro-based production, manufactur-ing for the market, including making equipment for use in schools, hiring outuniversity facilities); grants and donations from NGOs [non-governmentalorganisations] and well-wishers; and funding from alumni associations.

In the face of public universities’ struggle for organisational survival, this policypushed them towards full-thrust marketisation. It is this marketisation that hasgiven the public university system a second, parallel role as the country’s largestprivate university ‘system’. Although the government expected public universitiesto distribute their resource-dependence across various sources, such as researchand consulting or hiring out university equipment, all the universities resorted tothe same solution, admitting full-fee-paying students alongside government-subsidised ones.



This section has shown that public higher education was in large part privatiseddue to public finance problems, coupled with stabilisation imperatives associatedwith the drive to improve the economic performance of public enterprises dis-cussed in the previous section. In the following section, I shall discuss the phe-nomenon of public-private higher education in Kenya, as well as some of the waysin which the privatisation of Kenya’s public universities has been intensified.

Privatisation of Public UniversitiesThe privatisation of Kenya’s public universities is occurring mainly through thephenomenon of ‘private’ public university students who have also been referred toas ‘self-sponsored or ‘full-fee-paying’,’ but are more popularly known as ‘parallel’students. All these terms define such students comparatively, with regard to thoseadmitted through the Joint Admissions Board who receive government subsidiesthat cover tuition and accommodation, among other expenses. The programmesattended by these “private” public students are popularly referred to as parallelprogrammes; they are the de facto private wings of public universities, as describedby Magoha (2005).

In large part, public universities introduced parallel programmes alongside‘regular’ programmes attended by government-subsidised students to augmentanorexic allocations from the Kenyan public treasury. Although Kenyatta Univer-sity was the first public university to introduce private studentships targeted atserving teachers in the mid-1990s, the University of Nairobi (UoN) is widelyacknowledged as the institution that introduced parallel programmes.

Kiamba (2004) provides a detailed narrative of the birth of private studentshipin Kenya’s public universities. He correctly locates its introduction within acontext of biting fiscal hardship UoN was experiencing at the time, coupled withthe government’s declaration of its inability to continue large-scale funding of thehigher education sub-sector. The need to overcome the then-debilitating financialsituation drove the university to form a committee in 1994 to recommend waysand means of earning non-government revenue. Not surprisingly, it recommendedthe establishment of continuing education programmes as a key opportunity anda top priority for implementation.

Kiamba (2004) reports the committee’s attraction to the concept of the ‘entre-preneurial university’, which emphasises identifying a university’s resources andthe extent to which they may be developed for commercial use. Slack capacity inthe university on evenings and weekends was opportune for the introduction ofparallel programmes.

In 1998, UoN introduced parallel programmes, starting with a Master ofBusiness Administration and followed by a Bachelor of Laws, a Bachelor ofCommerce, and a Bachelor of Education programme. By the end of 1998,similar programmes had been introduced in the faculties of Medicine, DentalSciences, and Engineering, as well as at the Institute of Computer Science(Kiamba, 2004). Currently there are parallel programmes in virtually all theuniversity’s faculties. Soon after UoN introduced parallel programmes, Moi Uni-versity followed suit (also in 1998). Since then, they have been founded in allKenya’s public universities.

In addition to financial hardship and slack capacity, the introduction of parallelprogrammes in universities was encouraged by the existence of a broad and as yetunmet local demand for higher education. Table I shows that, while the number of



candidates qualified for university admission has been rising; only a small percent-age is admitted to public universities with a government subsidy.These figures donot include older working students who acquired qualifications and experiencesthat qualify them for university admission later in life.

Initially, as reported by Kiamba (2004), full fee-paying students were toattend classes in the evening (hence this articles’s title) and at weekends. But asdemand for these programmes soared, universities quickly realised that theseprogrammes may be the solution to their financial challenges, and began offeringthem on a full-time basis, though many are still also offered at night. Instead itwas no more a question of utilising the so called slack capacities, but optimisinga golden opportunity to generate revenue. The University of Nairobi prides itselffor its “very good experience with running a ‘private university wing’ thanks tothe expansion of its pool of private students (Magoha, 2005, p. 2), boasting thatits ‘private wing’ alone is larger than any single private university in Kenya, [and]is in fact also the largest ‘private university’ in the country” (University ofNairobi, 2005, p. 16).

As a strategic and policy response to public funding constraints, privatestudentship in Kenya’s public education system has its roots in the 1970s,when government-maintained secondary schools introduced Harambeestreams for ‘self-sponsoring’ students. Buchanan (1999) points out that publicsecondary schools offered ‘parallel’ streams for those who had not scored well inthe primary school exam. These students paid higher fees than those who hadbeen admitted on the basis of their exam scores. It is clear that the key factorsdriving the establishment of parallel programmes in public universitiesresembled those that led to the establishment of private streams in public sec-ondary schools; namely, unmet demand for education and public financechallenges.

Patterns of Privatisation in Kenya’s Public UniversitiesHere, I shall first discuss admission patterns, which show a steady increase ofprivate students, while state-subsidised students seem to be becoming a minority.Second, I shall discuss some of the key strategies that have led to the predominanceof private students at public universities.

Table I. Candidates qualified for university entry against number admitted inpublic universities (2000/01–2007/08)

Academic Year Number Qualifiedfor Admission

Number ofCandidates Admitted

through JAB

PercentageAdmitted (%)

2000/01 30,666 8,899 292001/02 40,447 11,147 282002/03 42,158 11,046 262003/04 42,721 10,791 252004/05 58,218 10,200 182005/06 68,030 10,000 152006/07 62,928 10,320 162007/08 83,134 17,000 20

Source: Wanjiku (2010).



Enrolment Patterns

Admission records from several public universities show a remarkable increase inthe number of ‘private’ students admitted to Kenya’s seven public universities.Indeed, state-subsidised students now represent a minority in most, if not all, ofKenya’s public universities. A review of these admissions records suggests not onlythat state-subsidised students are diminishing in number, but that they also mayeven be deliberately excluded from enrolment. The exclusion of state-subsidisedstudents is occurring in two main ways. First, universities are declaring feweropenings in certain programmes for students admitted through the Joint Admis-sions Board, while at the same recruiting private students in the parallel stream.Gravenir’s (2004) study of demand and admission trends in Kenya’s publicuniversities points to a possible deliberate attempt by universities to limit admis-sion of state-subsidised students into certain programmes, such as pharmaceutics,medicine, dental surgery, engineering, and law (Gravenir, 2004), which are con-sidered ‘marketable’ and are in high demand. He gives the example of the Bachelorof Pharmacy programme, whose declared capacity was 27 in the 1991–92 aca-demic year; nearly ten years later, in the 1999–2000 academic year, its declaredcapacity was 24 (Gravenir, 2004).The data on enrolment patterns provided belowseem to corroborate Gravenir’s claims. The second strategy for excluding state-subsidised students is a proliferation of new programmes that are exclusive to‘private’ students.

Below are undergraduate enrolment data for several faculties of the JomoKenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. They show the increasingpredominance of private students, as well as the two trends mentioned above.

The enrolment data presented in the tables are revealing. In terms of overallenrolment, Table V shows that, by 2011, the number of private students was

Table II. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology studentadmissions, Faculty of Engineering1

Year of study 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Course GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK

BSc. Civil Engineering 163 34 163 34 151 123 157 185 181BSc. Electrical and

Electronics Engineering176 20 176 20 158 51 149 65 165

BSc. Electronics andComputer Engineering

96 71 96 71 79 102 69 124 71

BSc. Telecom andInformation Engineering

79 91 79 91 80 108 83 127 88

BSc. Geomatic Engineering 176 9 176 9 89 109 92 115 107BSc. Mechanical Engineering 79 86 79 86 168 74 164 112 162BSc. Mechatronic Engineering 176 20 176 20 85 110 94 133 104TOTAL 945 331 945 331 810 677 808 861 878

Source: Registrar Academic’s Office, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.Notes:GoK — Government of Kenya, i.e. state-subsidised students.SSP — self-sponsored programmes which enrol private students.1 Five courses have not been included in Table II because of concerns with data reliability.



Table III. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology studentadmissions, School of Architecture and Building Sciences

Year of Study 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Sponsor GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK

CourseBachelor of

Architecture136 41 136 41 149 141 153 170 149 189 144

Bachelor ofLandscapeArchitecture

97 6 97 6 94 9 117 27 102 70 107

Bachelor ofConstructionManagement

115 65 115 65 104 21 126 44 106 101 113

TOTAL 348 112 348 112 347 171 396 241 357 360 364

Source: Registrar Academic’s Office, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Table IV. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology studentadmissions, School of Human Resource Development

Year of study 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Course GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK

Bachelor of BusinessInformationTechnology

0 0 0 0 0 259 0 340 0 464 32

Bachelor of Purchasing& SuppliesManagement

0 0 0 0 0 324 0 234 0 232 16

Bachelor of Commerce 0 394 0 0 0 989 0 1063 0 979 26Bachelor of Mass

Communication0 0 0 0 0 86 0 45 0 115 10

Bachelor of HumanResource Management

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 40 0

Bachelor ofDevelopment Studies

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 55 0 78 0

Bachelor of SupplyChain Management

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0

Bachelor ofEntrepreneurship

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

TOTAL 0 394 0 0 0 1658 0 1737 0 1917 84


Table V. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology total enrol-ments, 2006–2011

Year of study 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Sponsor GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK SSP GOK

Grand Total 2845 3324 2916 2126 4274 4145 2307 5929 3253 6517 3502




almost double that of state-subsidised students. Although the enrolment figures inthe tables do not show a consistent pattern, a dominant trend is discernible: withfew exceptions, private student enrolment in general increased sharply between2006 and 2011. Table IV suggests that programmes offered in the School ofHuman Resource Development (SHRD) were not available to state-subsidisedstudents until 2010.Though not provided in this article, enrolment data from theInstitute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases (ITMID) show enrolmenttrends similar to those of SHRD. By 2011, only six programmes out of the 14offered in the two units (SHRD and ITMID) were available to state-subsidisedstudents. Another important observation is the decline in the number of state-subsidised students in high-demand programmes such as the Electrical and Elec-tronics Engineering BSc., the Electronics and Computer Engineering BSc., andthe Mechatronic Engineering BSc. These declines tended to be accompanied bysimultaneous increases in enrolment by private students, a pattern that wouldcorroborate Gravenir’s (2004) claims of a possible deliberate attempt by univer-sities to limit the admission of state-subsidised students.

The enrolment patterns shown above are not unique to JKUAT. Wangenge-Ouma’s (2006, 2008b; Wangenge-Ouma & Nafukho, 2011) previous studies haveshown similar patterns at the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University, andMasinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. Kiriamiti (2011) hasrecently shown the emergence of similar patterns in Moi University’s School ofEngineering. The dominance of private students in the enrolment profiles ofKenya’s public universities signals these institutions’ attempts to manage unstableinstitutional environments, mainly due to a lack of public funding. At the sametime, they are evidence of a creeping but steady marginalisation of state-subsidisedstudents, who are becoming increasingly unpopular, since they do not represent aviable market: they do not offset the lack of public funding, nor do they promiseefficiency gains (profit maximisation), which, increasingly, seems to be becomingan end in itself.

Domain Offence and Domain Creation Strategies

The enrolment patterns observed above are the result of deliberate and strategicefforts by public universities. These could be classified mainly as domain offenceand domain expansion strategies. Cameron (1983, p. 370) explains: ‘domainoffence strategies are designed to expand the domain of the organisation, that is, todo more of what the organisation does well’. Such strategies ‘may include expan-sion of current markets (. . .) or cultivating alternative revenue sources’ (Cameron1983, p. 374).The goal of domain creation strategies is ‘to add related domains, todiversify, or to spread the risk’ (Cameron, 1983, p. 370). These strategies mayinclude ‘completely new programme offerings in high demand areas [and] acquir-ing subsidiaries . . . These strategies create new opportunities for institutionalsuccess while minimising the risk of [overdependence on] areas where resourcesare decreasing’ (Cameron, 1983, p. 375).

The main domain offence and domain creation strategies employed by Kenya’spublic universities include franchising, establishment of satellite campuses, andintroducing new programmes, usually in fields beyond the universities’ core areasof strength, such as health sciences, legal studies, information and communicationtechnology, management, and business studies (Wangenge-Ouma, 2008b;Wangenge-Ouma & Nafukho, 2011). In our case study, the establishment of the



School of Human Resource Development and the Institute of Tropical Medicineand Infectious Diseases, as well as the School of Law, are clear examples of domainoffence strategies which also signal mission drift — as the university’s namesuggests, as it was founded to offer programmes in agriculture and technology. Itwould seem that the market for agriculture and technology students does notguarantee adequate resources for the institution; hence the need to venture intoother markets.

The establishment of campuses and learning centres throughout the country,several of which are exclusive to private students, is another domain offence anddomain creation strategy employed by almost all of Kenya’s public universities.Many of these campuses are clustered in major urban centres, and run theirprogrammes mainly during weekends and in the evenings. Domain offence anddomain creation strategies must therefore be understood as strategic responses toresource-dependence difficulties.

ConclusionPrivatisation (and related phenomena such as marketisation) was not an activechoice for many African universities; rather, it is a feature of the present globalcontext of higher education. Factors such as disruptive resource instabilities;excessive demand for higher education; privatisation and deregulation efforts inother sectors of the economy; the global dominance of market logics; and, in thecase of Africa, the coercive and normative influence of supranational institutionssuch as the World Bank, have been identified as the key forces behind the increas-ingly private nature of higher education. These factors not only defined highereducation’s task environment but also occasioned a shift in the relationshipbetween the state, society, and higher education. Elements of market steering(privatisation) began to infiltrate hitherto state-controlled higher educationsystems, eventually gaining legitimacy as an overarching response to the challengesof higher education’s new task environments.

Patterns of higher education privatisation that are particular to Africa aregradually emerging. Other than private education attracting more actors beyondreligious organisations, the public university is emerging as a key provider ofprivate higher education. Not unlike state-owned enterprises, state-owned univer-sities in several African countries are becoming increasingly aggressive marketactors, a key characteristic of the emerging relationship between the state, society,and higher education in several African countries. This trend is particularly pro-nounced in countries where higher education was once tuition free (and where theState controlled tuition fees); such countries are faced with increasing demand forhigher education as state financial support plummets. In this context, privatisationby public universities is primarily a strategy for managing resource-dependencedifficulties.

In the case of Kenya, our analysis shows that the privatisation of publicuniversities is epitomised by the phenomenon of the “private” public universitystudent. Private students in Kenya’s public universities are not just private becausethey do not receive a direct government subsidy. They are also a distinct studentpopulation, with distinct student codes (for cost recovery purposes), and many ofthem are taught on weekends and at night from campuses or rented facilitiesintended for their exclusive use, and their teachers regard themselves primarily as‘service providers’. With the exception of Kenyatta University, all other public



universities have agreements with their staff (as providers of services to privatestudents) whereby, over and above their salaries, teachers are paid a percentage(30% for University of Nairobi and 35% for Jomo Kenyatta University of Agri-culture and Technology) of the fees paid by private students.

Several conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. From the enrolmentpatterns of Kenya’s public universities, state-subsidised students are a shrinkingminority, and it seems likely that institutional cultures are shifting to reflect thisreality.With the increasing trend of exclusive pockets of private students — be theyin faculties, programmes or campuses — a new kind of private university seems tobe emerging; namely, private universities owned by public universities. Lastly,through public universities’ domain offence and domain creation strategies, publicuniversities are present in every part of the country. No part of Kenya lacks alearning centre either owned by or affiliated with one of the country’s seven publicuniversities.As they stand, these trends are unregulated.

Gerald Wangenge-Ouma, Faculty of Education,University of the Western Cape, PrivateBag X17, Bellville 7535, South Africa, [email protected]

NOTE

The content of both day and night courses is expected to be the same.However, quality concerns have been raised with regard to the ‘night’ pro-grammes, especially those offered in ‘learning centres’ (located in anythingfrom rented rooms to satellite campuses) that lack the resources and infrastruc-ture for a meaningful university education. Wangenge-Ouma’s (2008b) study,however, highlights serious quality concerns with the entire higher educationsystem.

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public by day, private by night: examining the private lives of kenya's public universities

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