Seven red flags to look out for in Kenya's higher education

The first red flag, you need to ask about the graduation rates within a five-year period. If graduation rates are less than 50 percent, then stay away.

Stay far far away from that programme. It is unlikely that the students who sign up for the programme are not intelligent enough to finish.

Instead, it is probable that there exist underlying problems within that university’s business school itself such as unsupportive administrators, dodging supervisors, or unclear rules and procedures.

Further, ask for external validation of those graduation rates from a ratings agency, the Commission for University Education, or another regulator.

Second, ask about the number of international faculty, international reviewers, or international administrators. Business schools can often get into a small tunnel mindset whereby techniques literally from the 1960s keep getting regurgitated and new ideas, cutting-edge techniques, and global knowledge do not get absorbed.

Take for example the concept of servant leadership, developed by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 and refined later in the decade. It is staggering the number of business doctoral dissertations in East Africa that examine servant leadership against already tested other variables and conditions over and over and over again.

Does copycat research help harness the power of doctoral research to help identify and solve our own challenges in Kenya and through our continent? Universities, whether local or around the world, are stronger due to the greater cross-cultural linkages they have that bring in diverse and new concepts.

Third, in similar fashion to the above, pull a few of the recent business doctoral dissertations from the university’s website. Then go into Google Scholar and see if the main topics have been done before. If you see those same topics being researched by thousands of authors going back more than20 years, then select a different university’s business school.

Fourth, seek out who accredits the business school. The gold standard for business education in universities is the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Others include EQUIS (EFMD Quality Improvement System), AMBA (Association of MBAs), and ACBSP (Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs).

If the business school does not have accreditation from any of these, think twice before enrolling. Being a member of these associations is not adequate. The business school must be accredited by them. Check the accreditation websites directly, do not merely take the word of an admissions counselor.

Fifth, check the faculty and doctoral student publishing profiles on the university’s website. Sadly, many of our local business schools utilise incorrect statistical practices including combining many psychological business constructs, such as job satisfaction, organisational commitment, empowering leadership, etc., into the same variable.

This is a major no-go for international research.

But if faculty are not exposed to top-level cutting-edge research, they would never know. So, they require students to show mountains of unhelpful old-version statistical computations that do not assist in answering the research questions or hypotheses just to fill up space and look impressive, but any quality academic would look at it and laugh.

Then such faculty limit their students from then conducting such research and the students end up not getting published in prestigious journals, which limits their career options post-completion.

Check the following famous academic website to see if the journals that the faculty and doctoral students publish in is even listed or ranked: www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php. Also check out Google Scholar Metrics for publications.

Sixth, ask to see samples of doctoral dissertation comments by viva examiners.

Vagueness allows for politics, bureaucracy, and corruption. Look for specificity, such as on page 86 third paragraph add a sentence explaining the linkage between empowering leadership and organisational trust.

Do not tolerate dissertation comments like: apply the funnel method to your literature review.

Seventh, go into your trusted search engine and look up both the Times Higher Education as well as the QS Ranking websites.

If your targeted university does not appear in the top 700 ranked institutions in the world in either ranking and if your institution is not AACSB accredited, then you might find it difficult to ever be accepted as a faculty member in an international university once you graduate.

Have a management or leadership issue, question, or challenge? Reach out to Dr. Scott through @ScottProfessor on X or on email [email protected]