Exploration Into The Quality Of Kenyan University Graduates And Their Work Preparedness

ABSTRACT

There is a serious problem in Africa with large class sizes, availability of up to date equipment, academic materials, curricula relevance and integration of higher education labour market. Increased student enrollment without proportionate improvement of the available physical resources, learning environment, service quality, attraction of highly qualified teaching staff, inadequate development of a curriculum that is relevant to current job market needs and matching students skills to their employment needs are some of the problems facing these universities. These challenges are raising doubts on the quality of graduates produced by the Kenyan universities and by extension the level of their preparedness in their employment market. This research explored these two issues and also and ranked Kenyan universities based on the quality of their graduates. The main objective of this study was to explore into the quality of Kenyan university graduates and their work preparedness. Literature review was on quality of education globally, in Africa, regionally and locally while the conceptual framework on quality of graduates and work preparedness guided the study. The study used descriptive and exploratory designs to conduct qualitative analysis. The target population was 420 graduate employees and 46 supervisors / managers of the COYA 2013 companies who were given a five Likert Scale questionnaire ranging from one strongly disagree to five strongly agree. The questionnaire was divided into two sections to collect detailed data to provide information on quality of Kenyan graduates and their work preparedness. A survey of five public and five private universities was conducted to interrogate their side of the research to get an all inclusive perspective of this study. Characteristics of the study variables were analyzed using SPSS and the relationship between variables was tested using Pearson’s correlation analysis. Testing the operational framework model was done using structured model equation which utilizes multiple regressions. The study findings indicated that seventy two percent of the graduates have no practical skills; thirteen percent were working in jobs they were not trained on. Fifty one percent were not well prepared theoretically and practically. Public universities had more PhD holders and professors than private though private were better quality service providers. Additionally, the curriculum needed to be aligned with labour market needs. The study recommends that universities should involve the industry players in developing a curriculum that satisfies the universities, graduates and labour market needs. The research filled the gap and added knowledge on quality on quality of graduates and work preparedness, developed a conceptual framework to guide the study and conceptualize the variables of the study. The study also recommends a similar research in other countries using different variables. Secondly, flexibility of the degree obtained and the extent it can be applied in other areas can be study. It would also be prudent to carry out a research in colleges, secondary and primary school subsectors of Kenyan education which were not covered by this study.