Teacher Education University of Groningen is training educational administrators in Kenya

The University of Groningen in collaboration with the Erasmus University Rotterdam and educational experts from Ghana and South Africa will start training the ‘Commission for University Education’ (CUE) in Kenya. The project is funded by the Netherlands Initiative for Capacity Development in Higher Education Programme (NICHE) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ‘Commission for University Education’ is a national institution in Kenya. The project aims to use the CUE to maintain and to improve the standard, quality and relevance of education, training and research at universities throughout Kenya. The country expects to double the number of students at universities in 2017 (450.000 students at 100 universities). This represents a sharp increase in the activities and responsibilities of the CUE.

The main themes of the project are:

• Strengthening the internal organization and capacity to meet the growing demand and activities.
• Developing strategies, methods, procedures and systems to meet the quality requirements in the field of education, training and research.

Training and Research

These objectives will be realized in a series of training and research projects in various sub-areas of the above-mentioned themes like e-governance, gender, the implementation of a Kenyan Qualification Framework, the automation of management information, the further development of quality assurance tools for universities; further research into the relationship between training – labour market; development of rating and ranking criteria. In relation to most of these sub-themes, a Ph.D. project for a Kenyan staff member will be started.

Duration

The project will be supervised by Professor Adriaan Hofman from the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences. The project has a duration of 4 years with a budget of 1.5 million euros. Employees from both the CIT (Centre for Information Technology) and the Department of Research and Valorization will also be involved in the management of the project. The joint project will start in February with a visit of the Kenyan representatives to the University of Groningen.

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For more information, please contact:

• Professor Adriaan Hofman, w.h.a.hofman rug.nl , 31 (0)50 363 2000
• Wiebe Zijlstra, Research & Valorization, wiebe.zijlstra rug.nl , 31 (0)50 363 5362