How Prof Paul Wainaina Rose From Primary School Teacher to Kenyatta University VC

It is said that Prof. Wainaina is in opposition to a decision by the government to allow WHO set up the hub on the grounds adjacent to the Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital (KUTRH).

But not many people know that Prof. Winaina began his career as a primary school teacher to the helm of one of the country’s largest universitiesVice-Chancellor.

Wainaina holds a Bachelor of Education degree in Kiswahili from the University of Nairobi, awarded in 1976. 

Six years later, in 1982, he graduated with a master’s degree in education philosophy from the same institution with a thesis titled “Educational Implications of the Metaphysical Controversy Between Free Will and Determinism: With Special Reference to Moral Education in Schools.”

In 1985, he acquired his Ph.D in education philosophy from the University of Alberta in Canada. He titled his dissertation “A Critique of Utilitarian Justification of Education”.

On his 14-page CV, the don highlights his firm rise since 1970 when he taught in primary school for a year before transitioning to secondary school where he served for another year.

While pursuing his Ph.D in Canada between 1982 and 1984, Wainaia was also Tutorial Fellow at the University of Alberta.

He would return to Kenya as a lecturer at Kenyatta University until 1987, when he transferred to Moi University as a senior lecturer. 

In 1990, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education, serving in the capacity for six years before being made full professor in 1996.

Prof. Wainaina then went to the University of Namibia as a Professor of Philosophy of Education in 1997. During his tenure, he rose through the ranks to become a deputy dean and eventually a Dean in the Faculty of Education.

He then returned to Kenyatta University in 2005, where he has served to date. In the institution, he has risen to become a Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 2010, and then Vice-Chancellor in 2018.

Prof. Wainaina is a widely-published scholar in Education with three books under his name, as well as materials for journals.

He has also examined 9 Ph.D dissertations and 10 master’s theses.