Investing in Faculty: A Call to Action for Strengthening Kenya's University Education

This Policy Brief addresses significant challenges in Kenya's higher education system, highlighting faculty demographics, student-teacher ratios (STRs), and gender disparity.

Highlights

• Faculty Composition: 40% of faculty are lecturers, 33% are tutorial fellows, 12% are senior lecturers, 6% are graduate assistants, 5% are assistant professors, and 3% are professors.

• Student-Teacher Ratios (STRs): Current STRs exceed recommended norms in various disciplines, such as education at 53:1 and arts and humanities at 17:1, compared to the policy norm of 18:1 and 15:1 respectively.

• Faculty Needs: An additional 26,000 faculty members are needed by 2030 to achieve STR goals, with a notable requirement in natural sciences and mathematics (29%), arts and humanities (24%), and education (23%).

• Gender Parity: Achieving gender parity among faculty by 2030 requires around 11,200 additional female faculty members, a 65% increase from the 6,800 female faculty members recorded in 2017.

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This Policy Brief is based on the Demographics of African Faculty in the East African Community (DAF-EAC) study that was conducted in South Sudan and five other EAC partner states, specifically Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, between 2021 and 2023.