Institutional Coma, the Effect of Capitalism: An Empirical Quality Review of Higher Education Systems in Kenya and Uganda
Henry Heller’s candid historical account and astute institutional analysis of the evolution of higher education over the past forty years partly constitutes a significant and timely contribution to this current debate. This study takes stock of the contemporary malaise of postmodernism, neoliberalism and the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ of academic capitalism in higher institutions of learning with much focus on Kenya and Uganda. These two countries take prominence in this study because of their aggressive capitalistic approaches towards higher education in the East African region. Data were obtained from a statistically determined sample size of 186 respondents inclusive of the upper and middle-level university leadership as well as professors drawn from 32 universities (both private and public) in Kenya and Uganda. Findings revealed that, inter-university competition for student enrollment (B. = -0.879, sig. = 0.0133) strongly and negatively affected quality of higher education more than any other sub-variable, followed by profit making dogma (B.= -0.755, sig.= 0.0210), then sabotage for survival (B.= -0.712, sig.= 0.0264), while complacence of the regulatory bodies had a weak negative effect (B.= -0.619, sig.= 0.0339).
