The Faculty of Arts was a key feature of the Royal College from the very beginning. One could say that, even in those early days, the market, such as it was, spoke with its demand – and its message was that there was indeed a need for Arts-based skills even in the colonial economy in which the native was supposed to be confined, in a castle-like fashion, to blue collar skills. On 20th May 1964, the Royal College, Nairobi, became the University College, Nairobi, and a constituent college of the University of East Africa. Following this development the stu-dents and staff of the Faculty of Arts became an integral part of the enlarged regional insti-tution. The academic year 1965/66 saw the establishment of the Department of Education and the Centre for Economics. The latter soon became the Institute for Development Studies. The Department of political Science was established in 1966/67, and was later renamed the De-partment of Government. In 2000 the department was renamed the Department of Politi-cal Science and Public Administration to reflect more accurately the content of the courses taught in the department. In 1968/69, what had started as a sub-department within the Depart-ment of Economics was elevated to the Department of Sociology. In 1969/70, the Depart-ment of Philosophy and Religious Studies was established.

In the 1967-70 academic year the Department of Mathematics was transferred from the Faculty of Arts to the Faculty of Science. Students of the faculty of Arts were however al-lowed to register for mathematics and to obtain a BA degree in Mathematics. During the same period, the sub-department of Linguistics and African Languages (Now department of Linguistics and Languages) moved out of the Department of English to become itself a department In 1987 the Communication Skills Unit was established as an independent teaching unit within the Faculty of Arts. The British Council supported the establishment of this Unit by training lecturers to teach Communication Skills. The Department of English (still hosting the sub-department of French) assumed a new name: the Department of Literature with French as a sub-department. Other changes involved the elevation of the then Department of Education into a Faculty of Education in 1970/71, and its relocation to Kenyatta Univer-sity College. In 1980/81 the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies was split into two departments namely Department of Philosophy and Department of Religious Studies. The two have now merged into one department.