Diversity and liberalisation reforms: Evidence from the University of Nairobi

How do university funding reforms influence gender, ethnic and socio-economic inequality in university student bodies? Since the 1990s many countries have introduced dual-track admissions systems, which allow self-financing students to enter public universities with lower academic credentials than those selected through regular, state-subsidised admissions routes. In this paper, we use unique quantitative historical data to explore the evolution of diversity in the student body at the University of Nairobi, Kenya’s oldest and most prestigious university, which implemented such reforms in the late 1990s. Via a record of all graduates from the University of Nairobi since its founding, the paper uses information inherent in person-names to examine the gender, ethnic and socio-economic composition of graduating students. The results show that the expansion of fee-paying routes is associated with declining gender and ethnic inequality but increasing socio-economic inequality. These results evince the subtle ways in which education policies may trade-off different equality objectives.