Research On Access And Equity Of Female Students In Higher Education

Globalization of higher education has come with the issue of access and equity. The number of students competing to have access to higher education has increased rapidly under the backdrop of constrained resources in terms of finance and capacity of the existing higher education institutions to accommodate this upsurge in enrolment. The fact that there are many students fighting for these scarce resources have brought about stiff competition in terms of accessing higher education and thus creating equity issues in accessing higher education. This research paper tried to investigate the issue of access and equity among female students in higher education institutions in China and Kenya. The researcher looked at the factors which influence female access in higher education with emphasis to cultural and socio-economic factors. The researcher also investigated the representation of female students according to selected subject areas.The equity issues were considered in terms of general enrolment trends for a given period of time and the enrolment in different courses. The level of access took in to consideration issues like; socio-economic background, geographical regions, parental level of education and subject areas of specialization. The researcher also assessed the policy issues that have been put in place by the government of China and Kenya to address the access and equity issues in higher education.The general trend of disparity has reduced significantly in China with the majority of the female students attending institutions of higher learning; though the parity can be seen in a different angle as most of these students specialize in humanities, education and other related disciplines. In the Kenyan situation, the issue of parity still has along way to go since there are relatively low enrolments of female students in universities. Though in some subject areas like languages and human resource management, female students have shown a higher enrolment ratio...