Government funding, institutional size and student enrolment rate Among public technical vocational education and training Institutions in Nairobi Metropolitan

Abstract

The role of government funding in shaping enrolment trends within Technical and Vocational Education and Training TVET institutions has gained renewed policy attention in Kenya, particularly in the Nairobi Metropolitan region, where demand for technical skills is rising. While financial aid schemes such as the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) and government capitation have been implemented to enhance access, empirical evidence on their combined effects on student enrolment remains limited. Additionally, the moderating influence of institutional size on the relationship between funding and enrolment has not been sufficiently addressed in existing literature, creating a knowledge gap that this study seeks to fill. The main purpose of the study was to analyze the Influence of HELB and capitation funding on the student enrolment rate of public Technical Vocational Education and Training institutions in Nairobi Metropolitan, Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives to evaluate the influence of HELB funding on students enrollment rate of public technical vocational education and training institutions, establish the influence of capitation funding on students enrollment rate of public technical vocational education and training institutions and to analyze the moderating influence of institution size on the relationship between HELB and capitation funding and students enrollment rate of public Technical Vocational and Training Institutions in Nairobi Metropolitan, Kenya. The study adopted a longitudinal research design using secondary data covering the period 2019 to 2023, focusing on 12 public TVET institutions within Nairobi Metropolitan. The independent variables were HELB disbursements and government capitation, the moderating variable was institutional size, and the dependent variable was student enrolment rate. The data was subjected to rigorous tests, including heteroscedasticity, multicollinearity, autocorrelation, normality, cross-sectional dependence, the Hausman, and the Breusch-Pagan Lagrange Multiplier (LM) test to ensure robustness of the models. Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to establish initial associations, while the longitudinal data were analyzed using fixed effects ad random effects regression models. The regression analysis produced strong results (r = .818, R2 - .669, Adjusted R2 = .665), indicating that HELB and capitation jointly explained 66.9% of the variance in enrolment rates. Both funding variables exhibited significant positive effects on enrolment, with larger institutions benefiting more prominently due to economies of scale, confirming the moderating effect of institutional size. These findings highlight the crucial role of sustained and structured funding mechanisms in promoting TVET enrolment, while also underscoring disparities among institutions of varying capacity. The study concludes that government funding through HELB and capitation is pivotal in enhancing access to technical education, but that institutional size shapes the extent of the impact. It is recommended that policy makers strengthen and streamline disbursement frameworks to ensure equity, while also supporting capacity expansion in smaller institutions to reduce enrolment inequalities. Further research is suggested to examine other moderating variables such as infrastructure, governance practices and industry linkages and to extend the analysis to private TVET institutions for comparative.