Lecturers’ job satisfaction is considered an all round unit of an institution’s human resource strategies. The category of University (public or private) in which the lecturers belong may have an effect on their levels of job satisfaction. This paper analyses the relationship between category of university and lecturers’ job satisfaction in Universities in Kenya. A mixed methods design was adopted for the study which targeted academic staff of chartered public and private universities in the Rift Valley Region of Kenya. The sampling method employed was census, and a total of eight chartered universities (six public and two private) participated in the study. The participating universities were labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, in order to conceal their identities. Descriptive statistics, the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the independent-samples t-test was employed in the study. The study found out that chartered public universities’ staff were more satisfied compared to those in the private universities.
Keywords: Job Satisfaction, Lecturers, Private Universities, Public Universities, University category
