Innovations and Service Quality in Kenya’s’ Higher Education

Abstract

Innovations and service quality in higher education has been important for decades. In Kenya quality in higher education was embraced some years back by facilitating vigorous process and standards such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), international organization for standardization (ISO). The study sought to determine the relationship between innovations and service quality in Kenya’s’ higher education. Descriptive design was adopted with fourteen universities considered for the sample. Simple random sampling was used and a total of 42 questionnaires were administered. All the 42 questionnaires were returned. Analysis and various tests were done using varied statistical tools. Research findings indicate that innovation in universities remains the biggest challenge to quality. Some of the innovation types like services are poor. The applicability of innovation in driving university service quality such as internet based financial services is critical. The findings also indicated weak relationships between innovation and service quality in universities. The innovations constraints in both the established universities and the constituent colleges continue to be felt. The need to address innovation and service quality gaps as well encourage continuous professional development of the staff is therefore urgent in this area. Universities need to set aside proportional amount of funds for staff development, so as to encourage staff to continuously undertake research on innovations. Of importance also is embracing e-leaning as a model for knowledge dissemination at universities. E-content development is a clear driver that will facilitate greater outreach for university education in Kenya, and attend to the long-term innovations and service quality gaps that cannot be adequately addressed with the growth in demand for higher education in Kenya.