The Strategies Put In Place by Selected Private Universities in Kenya to Address the Issues of Financial Sustainability (Published)
Private universities have a great responsibility of managing financial sustainability and hence the need to explore different strategies that would enhance their financial sustainability. Kenya Vision 2030 requires institutions to develop strategies that will help in achieving its goals. Therefore, this paper explores the strategies administrators in private universities use to manage financial stability. Three major strategies were adopted by selected private universities to enhance their financial sustainability. These strategies include students’ recruitment strategies, internal and external funding strategies and program development, review and diversification. Ludwig Von Bertalanffy’s General System Theory (GST) originally developed in the 1940’s – which later came to be known as System Theory – was the conceptual framework that guided this study. Qualitative grounded theory design was used for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and reporting data. An interview guide was used to collect data for the two research questions that guided the study. Data was collected using self-developed interview schedule, and were digitally recorded and transcribed. The data was then organized manually and analyzed qualitatively through use of codes and formation of categories which eventually developed broader and tentative themes and patterns that brought meaning out of the information collected. Twenty respondents of this study were chosen purposefully from four out of the five universities in Kenya founded as theological colleges and had been chartered as private universities at the time of the study. Triangulation was used for data collection to increase the trustworthiness of the findings. The findings of this study indicate that the strategies that were put in place were not yielding sufficient income because of the many internal and external challenges being faced by these universities. Therefore this study recommends ways of developing, reviewing and diversifying revenue streams (input activities) that will generate adequate income to overcome the challenges in the system that are major impediments to implementation of activities (output) that would lead to establishment of a financial sustainable university.
Keywords: Financial Sustainability, Marketing, Private University, Program development, Strategies., Student Recruitment, review and diversification
Marketing Tools for Sports Management and Development in Universities (Published)
The university system is a fertile ground for identification, management, and development of sports talents for sports industry. Every industry including sports industry produces and offers products and services to the society. Sports products and services are produced by sportspersons for sports consumers, and this contributes to the socio-economic, political, infrastructural and cultural development of sports in the university and society at large, if well managed and marketed. Sports in universities can be managed and developed using marketing tools such as sponsorship, advertising, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, packaging, branding, merchandising, labeling, personal selling, direct marketing and warranty. The relevance and applicability of these marketing tools to sports management and development have been highlighted. It was recommended that sports marketing tools should be employed by universities for their sports management and developmental efforts and programmes. Experts in sports marketing and management should be integrated into the running of sports in universities. There should be collaboration between practitioners of sports and marketing professions to see how best sports can be marketed to consumers using different marketing tools. Researches on marketing and promotional tools with the aim of discovering more marketing tools and their applicability to sports should be encouraged.
Keywords: Marketing, Sports Development, Sports Management, University