Economic Development and the Marketing of Higher Education in Kenya - Dissertation Example

This report acknowledges that education is one of the most import investment sent since educated populations are capable of producing more economic benefits and able to contribute more to a country’s future wealth creation through increased productivity than the uneducated population (ref). With so much emphasis on higher education continuing to occupy people's minds, and with a limited number of places for higher education in existence in the country relative to the number of applicants, most able parents resort to sending their children to overseas institutions.

This phenomenon has resulted in the increase in privatization and the marketization of education in the country and abroad. This paper examines critically the implication of studying abroad and the contribution made if any by these students to their motherland in the form of wealth creation and nation-building, on one hand, the employer's demand, the reasons for the growth of international education, the general misunderstanding of the country’s special development needs and suggesting the strategies of enhancing restructuring of institutions.

Kenya and other developing countries rely strongly on agriculture and the sector is the biggest employer. This has resulted in the provision of many courses that are geared towards this sector with little emphasis on specialized ones. This has resulted in some developing countries e. g China opting to support students who would prefer to take these specialist courses in the developed countries for the sake of its future development and luring them back with incentives (economic intelligence, 2006).

In Kenya, like many other African countries, there are no controls on the type of courses students wish to study overseas. Therefore, students’ study whatever they want. This has led to a massive mismatch between the number of graduates and the job opportunities available to them. This has been experienced by both local and overseas undergraduate acute therefore a situation where students studying abroad less willing to go back to their countries while those in the country trying to migrate to the developed world.

And while China’s communist type of rule has helped in centrolenids’ resources and balance the number of graduates to the country’s future employment, the same cannot be said with regard to Kenya where freedom of education and democracy is commonly practiced.

With economic development mostly characterised by movement of rural population which is mainly agricultural based to urban centres (Henderson, 2005), there is a need therefore to look at the change from mainly agricultural courses to specialised ones. The aim of this paper therefore is to provide a wider understanding on how the educational system can be re-structured so as to fit with the economic growth of Kenya and lessen the need for students to migrate to developed countries where in most cases, their potential needs may never be fulfilled.

There is a need therefore to conduct a situation analysis and develop a marketing plan for Kenya to encourage local patronage of it’s higher education while discouraging the students leaving the country to study undergraduate or postgraduate courses in huge numbers in the developed world. 4.0 LITERATURE REVIEW. A lot has been written about international students. For example, international students views on Australia as a tourist destination (Son and Pearce, 2005), how foreign students are spurring economic growth in Ontario Canada (Gilbert, 2005), The constant change of strategies by western universities which are meant to increase the number of foreign students (Russell, 2005).

Altbach and Bassett (2004) estimates that the number of foreign students moving from Asia and other developing world may pass 8 million by the year 2025. On the other hand, there is very little information on the effect of luring foreign students from developing countries and the relevance of what they study against mutual benefit, sustainability and the prioritisation of their countries economic needs. This is a very worrying situation for the developing countries who at the same time worry more about losing some of their best and able students and would be workers to the developed world.

These concerns have been echoed by many African countries and some of the new EU member states from eastern European countries especially Poland who are worried about losing their young workers and students to the more developed economies (Economist, 2006). Buchmann and Hannum (2001), explains that inequality in education is as a result of interaction between family decisions (demand) and opportunities (supply). The supply of education in most developing countries like Kenya however is in the hands of the government.

The government therefore may decide to change the structure of the educational system in order to increase demand. This is what the government of Kenya did when it made primary education free for all in 2002. However, the increase in primary education has not been matched by expansion in higher education where demand is still very high. This opportunity to expand higher education has been difficult mainly due to lack of resources (Kusimba, 2006). Buchmann and Hannum again suggest that modernisation of education in developing countries would be difficult as western thoughts influence what they call the ‘stratification processes’.

And while Kenya relies on Aid for internal growth and restructuring of it’s educational reforms, this is greatly undermined by the developed countries who impose conditions which only act to prove their capitalism nature and developing countries as the producers of natural resources and labour suppliers (Wagner, 2001). Freedman (2002), suggest that liberal education should be embraced more and explains it’s importance in nurturing independent thinking and it’s importance to a democratic society.

And although only a small number of the country’s mainly elite population have access to liberal education in developing countries, it is known to provides knowledge and understanding of cultures and their problems which could be beneficial to Kenya. Instead these country concentrates more in achieving industrialisation (Bloom and Rosovsky, 2003). According to Allen and Higgins report (UKCOSA, 1994), majority of students who come to the UK do so because they would like to have the opportunity to travel, experience different cultures, receive better quality education and to have better job prospects in their home countries.