Institutional Policy Support and Doctoral Studies Completion at the University of Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

Doctoral education underpins a nation’s capacity for knowledge production, yet completion rates remain low: fewer than 30% of doctoral candidates in Kenya complete their studies, and fewer than 11% of those in public universities do so. This study examined whether institutional policy support is related to doctoral studies completion at the University of Nairobi, the oldest and largest public university in Kenya. A descriptive survey design was adopted within a convergent mixed-methods approach, triangulating the views of doctoral graduates, supervisors, and faculty deans. From a target population of 1,839 (1,183 supervisors, 646 graduates, and 10 deans), Taro Yamane’s (1967) formula yielded a sample of 329 questionnaire respondents (182 supervisors and 147 graduates), selected through stratified random sampling; the 10 deans were purposively selected for interviews. An overall response rate of 76.7% was achieved (260 of 339 questionnaires, plus 8 of 10 dean interviews). The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure and Bartlett’s test of sphericity supported construct validity, and Cronbach’s alpha (≥ .70) confirmed internal consistency. Quantitative data were analysed in SPSS 25 using descriptive statistics and simple linear regression; qualitative data were analysed thematically in NVivo 15. Institutional policy support was not a statistically significant predictor of completion for either graduates (β = .035, p = .727) or supervisors (β = .064, p = .417), although both relationships were positive. Both groups nonetheless rated policy support highly (grand means of 3.95 and 4.34 on a five-point scale). This combination suggests that policy frameworks exist but do not, by themselves, distinguish completion outcomes; the qualitative strand attributed this gap to a distinction between policy existence and policy enactment. Policy enactment should be tested as a moderating condition in future research across Kenyan universities.