PEACEBUILDING AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING IN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING IN KENYA

Abstract

Among Kenya’s development challenges, none are more pressing than its social and economic travails. With these development challenges, Kenya has a growing higher education sector. The number of students in universities has risen exponentially. Today, there are 10 more universities in the country than there were four years ago (68 compared to 58). The number of public universities tripled in 2013 (from seven to 22) after the government upgraded 15 university colleges into full-^fledged institutions but the requisite infrastructure and human resource has never been provided, resulting in undue pressure on the existing facilities and personnel. There are a number of important challenges facing universities in Kenya. These include the demand for access and social equity, funding and the cost to students, governance and internal management, the changing roles of academics, demographic changes among academics, inefficiency, and ethnicity. In addition, overcrowding; ever-growing demand; erosion of technical colleges due to acquisitions and takeovers by public universities in search of space; insufficient/declining public funding; curricula that are not responsive to modern-day needs of the labor market; declining quality; crumbling infrastructure; poor governance; rigid management structures pose major challenges to the provision of quality education in our universities. Due to this the students are exposed to problems related to transition, orientation, career choice, adjustment and disciplinary restrictions. The basic aim of this study therefore is to investigate the role of peace dimensions in promoting peace and its influence in the university. A cross sectional survey method was adopted as the research design for this study. The study will rely on questionnaires as the main primary data collection instrument with the stratified random sampling technique. The qualitative data from the respondents will be organized according to the population and analyzed. Permission will be sought for the study in the various universities that the research will be conducted from the University of Nairobi.