Mak suspends two masters courses

KAMPALA

At least two programmes at Makerere University have been dropped for this academic year after it emerged that there are no lecturers to teach students.
The affected courses in the College of Humanities and Social Science will affect 300 students who had applied for Masters in Public Administration and Management and Masters in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies.
Prof Edward Kirumira, the college principal, told Daily Monitor they were hard pressed when they learnt that four of their senior staff were going for further studies after getting fellowships in the United Kingdom.
Initially, Prof Kirumira said six programmes were going to be affected but the college improvised.

Mistake made
“Yes, we advertised the programmes. We shouldn’t have done it. The institution made a mistake of not telling applicants early what had happened. This incidence opens us to the human resource need. There is no point in admitting students when there is no one to teach them,” he said.
“It is an unfortunate occurrence but it is not cheating the public. We have a department that is constrained. We have had a high staff turnover. Public administration has 200 students, if you have three qualified staff, how do you risk admitting these students,” he added.
According to Prof Kirumira, most of his courses in the college depend on part-time lecturers and some courses including political science, history, philosophy, languages and religious education might suffer a human resource vacuum in the near future as majority of the staff are nearing retirement.
“It is a big problem especially if the university is going to run graduate programmes. Eighty per cent of the teaching staff in Development Studies are part-timers. Most of the staff will have retired in five years,” he said.
His college has 9,000 students, 20 per cent of these are graduate students with only 256 academic staff.
Prof Buyinza Mukadasi, director Directorate of Research and Graduate Training assured candidates they need not to reapply when the programmes are next run although he warned that they have to notify the university before.

Lift recruitment ban
He also appeal to government to lift the recruitment ban to allow them source for lecturers in order to improve the current student to staff ratio.
“There are many students in the department who have not been supervised. The few lecturers who have remained will continue to supervise and offer research leadership to continuing students until the backlog is cleared,” Prof Buyinza said.
Makerere University Vice Chancellor, Prof John Ddumba Ssentamu, has reported in the past that the country’s oldest institution operates at 45 per cent staff establishment.
The university annual report 2013 had a student enrolment of 45, 132 as of January last year. There are 1,477 academic staff according to the human resource directorate of January, 2014.

president’s directive

The development comes in the wake of the President’s directive, asking all publics universities to review courses and drop those that have no relevance to Uganda’s development plans.
While appearing at a public function recently, the President said government would stop sepnding money on courses that are not in tandem with the National Development Plan, which seeks to create more employment opportunities for Ugandans.

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No staff

Prof Edward Kirumira, the College of Humanities and Social Science principal says they cannot go on with the courses due to the absence of some key staff who will be travelling to United Kingdom to study.
Those affected

The move is expected to affect more than 300 students who had applied to join the course.
Affected courses. The students who will be affected are those that had applied for Masters in Public Administration and Management and Masters in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies.

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