Counselling Needs of Students in Private and Public Chartered Universities in Kenya: Is There a Difference?

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in counselling needs of students in private and public chartered universities in Kenya. The counselling needs of students were put into three categories; career/educational needs, personal needs and life skills needs. Descriptive survey design was used. The respondents were university students, student counsellors and peer counsellors who made a total sample of 487 from six randomly selected universities. Simple random sampling stratified random sampling and purposive sampling methods were used to arrive to the sample size. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. The data was analysed using inferential statistics and specifically the chi-square to test the hypotheses. Chi-square analysis showed; no statistically significant difference in personal/educational needs, statistically significant difference in personal needs and a statistically significant difference in the life skills needs of students in private and public chartered universities of Kenya. The study will advise the university management on the type of counselling programmes to implement or to improve that are congruent to the counselling needs of the learners.