By Jerameel Kevins Owuor Odhiambo
In Kenya’s current educational landscape, a troubling fact emerges: over 70% of university students are now enrolled in STEM and business-related courses, while humanities departments struggle with dwindling numbers and reduced funding. The 2022 University Funding Model explicitly prioritized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses, allocating significantly higher per-student funding compared to humanities disciplines. A recent survey of Kenyan parents revealed that 85% would discourage their children from pursuing degrees in philosophy, history, or literature, viewing them as “unmarketable.” This dramatic shift represents more than just changing career preferences; it signals a fundamental crisis in how Kenyan society values different forms of knowledge. The statistics reveal a nation gradually abandoning the very disciplines that could help it understand its complex post-colonial identity, navigate ethnic tensions, and build a more just society. When the then Cabinet Secretary for Education Ezekiel Machogu announced the new competency-based curriculum reforms in 2023, not a single humanities scholar was included in the core advisory team.
The roots of this disdain stretch back to Kenya’s colonial experience, where education was instrumentalized as a tool for creating a compliant workforce rather than critical thinkers. British colonial administrators established a system that valued technical skills for low-level administrative roles while reserving deeper intellectual pursuits for the colonizers themselves. This legacy persists in the contemporary dismissal of humanities as “soft” or “impractical” disciplines that cannot directly contribute to economic development. President William Ruto’s government has repeatedly emphasized the need for “hands-on skills” and “job-ready graduates,” inadvertently reinforcing the notion that critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and cultural understanding are luxuries Kenya cannot afford. Nonetheless, this perspective ignores how countries like South Korea and Singapore deliberately invested in humanities alongside STEM to build innovative, ethically grounded societies. As philosopher Martha Nussbaum warned in her book “Not for Profit,” nations that marginalize humanities education are “producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves.”
Kenya’s unemployment crisis has intensified pressure on students to choose “practical” courses, creating a vicious cycle that devalues humanities further. With youth unemployment hovering above 35%, families understandably push their children toward degrees perceived as offering clearer career paths. However, this narrow focus ignores compelling evidence that humanities graduates develop transferable skills—critical analysis, communication, cultural intelligence—that are increasingly valuable in a complex global economy. A 2023 study by the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis found that humanities graduates were actually more likely to be self-employed entrepreneurs than their STEM counterparts, having developed the creative and analytical skills necessary for innovation. The irony is profound: in seeking security through technical education, Kenyan families may be limiting their children’s adaptability in a rapidly changing job market. As economist Anzetse Were noted in her analysis of Kenya’s education crisis, “we are training young people for jobs that may not exist in ten years, while neglecting the cognitive flexibility that humanities provide.”
The government’s funding policies have institutionalized this bias, creating a two-tier university system where humanities departments operate with crumbling infrastructure and overworked faculty. Under the current Differentiated Unit Cost model, a student studying medicine receives approximately Ksh 500,000 in government funding annually, while a history student receives barely Ksh 100,000. This disparity sends a clear message about which disciplines the state values, making it nearly impossible for humanities departments to attract talented students or maintain quality programs. Libraries in many public universities lack current books in philosophy, sociology, or anthropology, while science labs though often inadequate themselves receive priority funding. Faculty members in humanities departments frequently teach classes of over 200 students, making meaningful engagement impossible and reducing once-vibrant intellectual discussions to rote memorization. The underfunding is so severe that the University of Nairobi’s philosophy department, once the intellectual heartbeat of East Africa, now operates with just five full-time faculty members serving hundreds of students.
This impoverishment extends beyond universities into Kenya’s public discourse, where complex social problems are addressed with technocratic solutions that ignore historical context and cultural nuance. The perennial challenges of corruption, ethnic polarization, and inequality are treated as management problems requiring better systems rather than deep-seated issues requiring cultural transformation. Policy makers reach for technical fixes new anti-corruption software, digital voting systems, economic stimulus packages while ignoring the ethical, philosophical, and historical dimensions of these challenges. When the 2017 and 2022 elections nearly tore the country apart along ethnic lines, the response was largely administrative: reform the electoral commission, improve vote tallying technology, enhance security. Even so no serious national conversation emerged about the historical grievances, colonial land injustices, and philosophical questions of citizenship that fuel these divisions. As political scientist Wambui Mwangi observes, “Kenya’s elite treat ethnic violence as a mechanical failure of the state apparatus, rather than a profound crisis of values and historical memory that only humanities can adequately address.”
The consequences of this humanities deficit are visible in Kenya’s struggling creative economy and its limited cultural soft power on the global stage. Despite having some of Africa’s most talented writers, musicians, and artists, Kenya lacks the critical infrastructure of literary criticism, art theory, and cultural studies necessary to elevate these voices internationally. Nigerian literature flourishes globally partly because Nigeria invested in humanities departments that produced scholars who could contextualize and theorize African creativity. Kenya’s cultural producers work largely without this intellectual support system, limiting their reach and impact. The country’s film industry remains nascent compared to Nigeria’s Nollywood, not primarily due to funding gaps but because of an absence of film studies programs, critical theory, and aesthetic philosophy. When Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kenya’s most celebrated writer, advocated for decolonizing the mind and embracing African languages, his ideas found more institutional support in American and European universities than in Kenyan ones. This represents an extraordinary failure of imagination: Kenya exports its greatest minds because it cannot recognize the value of what they do.
The business sector’s dismissal of humanities graduates reflects a superficial understanding of what actually drives innovation and organizational success in the 21st century. Kenyan employers frequently cite a “skills gap,” claiming graduates cannot think critically, communicate effectively, or navigate ethical dilemmas precisely the competencies humanities education develops. Yet these same employers preferentially hire STEM graduates and then complain about their lack of soft skills. Forward-thinking global companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple actively recruit philosophy and literature majors, recognizing that algorithmic thinking must be complemented by ethical reasoning and human insight. A 2019 LinkedIn study found that four of the top five skills companies needed most were fundamentally humanities-based: creativity, persuasion, collaboration, and adaptability. In Kenya’s rush to become a tech hub the “Silicon Savannah” leaders overlook how Silicon Valley’s success stems partly from its integration of humanities and technology, exemplified by Steve Jobs’s famous assertion that “it’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our heart sing.”
Kenya’s most pressing challenges managing devolution, addressing historical injustices, building national cohesion, combating corruption are fundamentally questions requiring humanistic inquiry rather than technical solutions. The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission’s 2013 report documented horrific historical injustices from colonial times through post-independence regimes, yet its recommendations languish unimplemented partly because Kenyan society lacks the philosophical and historical frameworks to process intergenerational trauma. Transitional justice is not an engineering problem; it requires deep engagement with ethics, memory, forgiveness, and collective identity domains where humanities excel. Similarly, devolution’s implementation struggles reflect not merely administrative challenges but profound disagreements about citizenship, community, and the relationship between individual and collective rights. Without historians to contextualize ethnic identities, political scientists to analyze power dynamics, and philosophers to articulate principles of justice, these conversations remain superficial. As Kenyan scholar Godwin Murunga argues, “Kenya’s crisis is not a lack of technical capacity but a poverty of ideas about who we are and who we want to become questions that only robust humanities can help us answer.”
The marginalization of humanities also impoverishes Kenya’s democracy, producing citizens who lack the analytical tools to interrogate political rhetoric or resist manipulation. Civic education was removed from the Kenyan curriculum in the 1990s, and while it has recently returned, it emphasizes procedures over critical engagement with democratic principles. Students learn how bills become law but not how to evaluate whether those laws are just. They memorize the constitution but don’t study political philosophy to understand the competing visions of human nature and society embedded in constitutional design. This creates a citizenry vulnerable to ethnic mobilization, populist appeals, and misinformation precisely what Kenya has experienced in recent electoral cycles. A population educated primarily in technical subjects may produce excellent engineers but vulnerable voters who cannot distinguish demagoguery from leadership. As political theorist Michael Sandel notes in “Democracy’s Discontent,” democratic citizenship requires “the capacity to deliberate well about the common good” a capacity that technical education alone cannot provide. Kenya’s democracy founders not because Kenyans lack technical skills but because they lack sufficient opportunity to develop the critical, ethical, and historical consciousness that humanities education cultivates.
International comparisons reveal that Kenya’s humanities aversion is neither inevitable nor universal, and that successful nations value balanced education. South Korea, often cited as an economic miracle, deliberately maintained strong humanities programs even during its rapid industrialization, recognizing that innovation requires cultural creativity alongside technical prowess. The country now leads globally in both technology and cultural exports, from Samsung smartphones to Korean cinema and music. Singapore, despite its technocratic reputation, has invested heavily in arts, humanities, and liberal education at its universities, with founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew himself championing the study of history and philosophy. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana and South Africa maintain relatively stronger humanities traditions and, not coincidentally, have more vibrant public intellectual cultures. Rwanda, in rebuilding after genocide, established genocide studies programs, invested in national reconciliation research, and supported historians and philosophers exploring questions of identity and belonging. These examples demonstrate that the choice to marginalize humanities is a policy decision, not an economic necessity, and that Kenya’s current trajectory represents a failure of vision rather than an inevitable response to development pressures.
We need a deep rethink and fundamental reconceptualization of education’s purpose in Kenya, moving beyond narrow vocationalism toward human flourishing and societal transformation. Government funding formulas should recognize that a healthy society requires philosophers, historians, and sociologists as much as doctors and engineers, and allocate resources accordingly. Universities must resist pressure to become mere job training centers and reclaim their role as spaces for critical inquiry and cultural preservation. The private sector should recognize that their long-term success depends on employees who can navigate ethical complexity, understand diverse perspectives, and think creatively—competencies best developed through humanities. Parents and students need exposure to evidence that humanities graduates can succeed economically while also contributing to social transformation. Most fundamentally, Kenyan society must recover a richer conception of education’s purpose: not merely to produce workers but to develop thoughtful citizens capable of building a just, creative, and cohesive nation. As the renowned Kenyan historian Bethwell Ogot once observed, “a nation that does not know its history has no future.” To this, we might add: a nation that does not value philosophy, literature, and the social sciences condemns itself to repeat the mistakes of the past while lacking the imagination to envision and create a better future.
The writer is a social commentator
Similar Posts by Mt Kenya Times:
- Mt Kenya Times ePAPER May 18, 2026
- Diaspora Times Global May 16 – May 22, 2026
- Ruto celebrates Thika High 70 Years, announces major expansion of learning facilities
- Rach Harvey: Championing Kindness as a Force for Global Change
- Zimbabwe’s tensions mount: Moyo, Mnangagwa trade blows over constitutional changes
Mt Kenya Times 
James Wakahiu