CONTRIBUTIONS AND CHALLENGES OF ASSOCIATE FACULTY IN THE EXPANSION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN KENYA

Abstract

Since the sporadic proliferation of universities in Kenya, university education has embraced a common cost-cutting measure which has impacted on the employment of the teaching resource, namely the contracting of part-time lecturers. The solid argument in the justification of these measures has been hinged on the fact that there has been lowered funding from the government for public universities. For private universities, it has been argued that it is an effective means of minimizing costs. The big questions therefore are, in which ways have the part time lecturers contributed to development of higher learning in universities? What challenges have the part-time lecturers faced under this new approach? How have the recipients of higher education been affected by this arrangement? Based on this, the overall question is what can be done to improve the effectiveness of this arrangement? Data will be collected from a sample size of 250. Out of these, 100 will be part-time lecturers in both public and private universities and the other 150 respondents will be students. They will be asked about the challenges they face and their suggestions on what can be done to improve the quality of higher learning. The study will be beneficial not only to the policy makers at the higher education level, but also the management and stakeholders in the running of universities.