Exploring Interventions for increasing Students’ Participation in Science and Technology Bachelor Degree Programmes in Public Universities, Kenya

This paper argues that although the government and public Universities have committed to initiating several intervention measures targeting increasing students’ participation in Science and Technology Programmes, only 29% of students were studying a course in these areas by the year 2016. Such scenario implies that the country is seriously lagging behind in the realization of Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP I) participation target of 50%. The purpose of this study was to evaluate some interventions that could be employed to increase student participation. The study employed descriptive survey design to target 31 public Universities, 237 lecturers, 107 Heads of Departments (HoDs) and 31 Academic Registrars. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select three Public Universities, 12 HoDs, 24 lecturers, and three Academic Registrars who participated in the study and interview schedules were utilized to collect data. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically and reported in form of tables, quotations and narrations while quantitative data was analyzed by use of frequencies, percentages, means and pie charts. It was established that Inter-governmental co-operations, linkages and agreements, University-secondary schools linkages, Income Generating Activities (IGAs) and relying on philanthropic gestures were interventions employed. The study concludes that most intervention measures had not played a significant role in enhancing students’ participation and recommends that Universities should engage in Public- Private- Partnerships (PPP) in funding University education, including but not limited to the establishment of robust endowment funds through alumni and other donors for scholarships, establish and commercialize Intellectual Property Organization (IPO), promote co-operation for research, offer incentives to staff winning research grants, engage in value engineering and also diversify sources of income by adopting suitable business models ......