Kenyan varsities suffer scarcity of professors

Kenyan varsities suffer scarcity of professors

Kenyan varsities suffer scarcity of professors

A vice-chancellor from Kenya recently spoke out about the scarcity of academics at universities.There are 562,925 students enrolled in 68 universities and fewer than 1,000 professors. That works out to 563 students per professor on average. 1,112,439 students and 4,034 professors, or around 275 students per professor, are found in South Africa.

The highest teaching position in the university is held by professors. They have distinguished themselves in teaching, research, scholarship, and service to earn this position. They ought to produce large-scale research funding, publish widely in esteemed publications, and engage the community in meaningful ways.

Kenya’s university system has seen tremendous growth in recent decades in opposition to a static or shrinking professorial class. For example, Kenya has 32 universities in 2010 with approximately 177,175 students enrolled. Today, enrollment at colleges has more than quadrupled and the number of universities has more than doubled. With an average of 774 students per professor, there were just 238 instructors.

Consequently, even while enrollment at universities has increased by more than 31%, the average student to professor ratio has dropped by a comparable percentage (27%), indicating a persistent trend of low professor to student enrolment ratios.

For public universities alone, government data indicates that the student population has surged by 70 per cent while that of professors has grown by only 11% in the last 10 years. This dearth of professors has implications for academic leadership, knowledge generation, mentorship and university reputation in a competitive global academic environment.

My scholarly interest is in African higher education, with emphasis on finance, privatisation, marketisation, governance, equity and policy. In my view, the main reasons for the shortage of professors in Kenya are well documented.These are the low graduation of PhD degree holders, rapid expansion of the university system, heavy workload, absence of an institutional culture that supports academic scholarship, and departure of prominent academics from the universities.

Universities could take three quick steps to address the situation:Reduce the number of part-time academic employees in private universities, expedite PhD graduation for academic staff on staff development programs, and create a national research program financed by the government that encourages rigorous scholarship.