NEEDS BASED FUNDING MODEL AND HIGHER EDUCATION ACCESS: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE KENYAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES NEW FUNDING MODEL

Abstract

Quality Education is the fourth Sustainable Goal, and in Kenya, Access to Quality Education is a right. This shows education forms an integral sphere in one’s life as an enabler and a transformational tool of society. It is therefore imperative to assess and re-examine the objectivity and reliability of the Kenyan Public Universities' New Funding Model of indexing students on a needy basis for funding. The overall objective of this paper was to evaluate the objectivity of categorizing students into various strata of funding needs. Specifically, the paper examined the sufficiency and appropriateness of the application requirements for funding to inform categorization based on the level of need and degree of vulnerability. The paper found out that the application requirements are too limited to exhaustively provide a good judgment on the indexing of the students' funding needs. This would not only hinder students from accessing higher education but also widen the poverty gap for students coming from economically weak backgrounds. The rushed manner in which the first cohort of students was subjected to the funding evaluation tool might have disadvantaged students in making informed applications and the provision of the necessary requirements to support their status. It was discovered that there is a very thin line among the respondents if they were to be categorized into the various funding strata, with the majority of the respondents tending towards being categorized as either vulnerable or very needy. Descriptive statistics were used to analysis data which had 2391 respondents, and the findings were presented by use of tables and graphs. The paper recommends that the funding tool be modified to include other parameters of evaluating the needy index of the applicants and that categorization of the students be done at the secondary school exit level to enable various financers (parents and other government or non-governmental agencies to arrange for the higher education funding. The paper findings may be relevant in informing funding policy formulation at the national government level, as well as adding to the existing literature on higher education funding.