Abstract

One of the serious problems facing education in Kenya’s public universities has been a persistent student disturbance. Private universities on the other hand, seem to have established a reputation of having minimal incidence of student disturbances. As such private universities are known to have had a good record of student conduct. This may be attributed to the attitudes that students hold towards their Campus environment. Attitudes are acquired and influenced by the social, academic, psychological and physical aspects of an environment. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of Campus environments on students’ attitude toward them. The study employed the Causal-comparative study design. Quantitative data was collected through a Students’ Attitude Questionnaire that was administered to 352 randomly selected second and third year full-time students enrolled in three public and three private universities in Kenya. T-tests were used to test the significance and determine whether to reject or accept the study hypotheses. Results indicated significant differences in attitudes toward Campus environment between students enrolled in Public and those enrolled in Private universities. This helped to shed light on the understanding of the student behaviours witnessed in Kenya’s universities. However, the effects of gender did not seem to exert any influence on students’ attitudes toward campus environment. The study recommended that Managers of public universities need to critically investigate on the social, academic, psychological and physical aspects of their institutions that seem to negatively affect their students attitudes toward campus environment.  

Key Words: Students' attitudes, Campus environment, Private university, Public university, student disturbances.