42 KIU PhDs hang in balance

The National Council for Higher Education has said it has started a process to verify degrees of the recently awarded 42 PhD graduates from Kampala International University.
Prof A.B. K. Kasozi, the NCHE executive director, on Friday said while KIU is one of the seven private chartered universities and can award the degrees in question, it lacks the capacity to train many students at the PhD level.

The university was chartered in 2009. It is against this background that NCHE is querying the period in which these candidates were channeled out. The Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act provides that a PhD degree can take between three to five years.

“The period is 2009. We know what it takes to train a PhD graduate. We know our universities don’t have the capacity to graduate 42 PhDs at ago. The first sight of this number was frightening and we said lets go there and confirm,” Prof Kasozi told journalists.

Last year, at least 20 PhD graduates received their award from the institution.
“It was our feeling that KIU, and a number of other universities in Uganda for that matter, did not have the capacity to train and graduate all the said students at the PhD level,” Prof Kasozi said in Kampala.

He explained that they had asked the university to stay the awards of those terminal degrees until NCHE has completed reviewing the awards. However, KIU went ahead and awarded the degrees.

Although a charter is renewable after every five years after an external evaluation by the national council, this has not been done because of financial constraints.
Prof Kasozi added that for any institution outside Uganda to run its programmes in the country, it will be the responsibility of the body to ensure they meet the standards.
“We have to re-accredit programmes for any university which opens a branch here. In the case of KIU branch in Kenya, Commissioner for Higher Education Kenya may have to ensure that quality education is maintained in their country because we may not be able to know what is going on there,” Prof Kasozi said.

Earlier, the NCHE Chief Executive, David Some, told the Daily Nation, a sister newspaper in Kenya, that the commission cannot undertake ‘equation for qualification’ of KIU papers, meaning that they are not qualified according to the Kenyan standards.
“We need to clarify whether all the courses at the university are accredited because a lot of Kenyans are concerned,” Prof Some told the Education. This would mean that thousands of students who have gone through this university in these branches may lose their qualification.

KIU is home to 10, 000 students and 80 per cent of these are Kenyans.
Prof Some said they were waiting for a communication from NCHE.

pahimbisibwe@ug.nationmedia.com