Balunywa’s thoughts: Do we need degrees for journalists in parliament?

Requiring reporters in Parliament to have a degree is a prescription of blocking out talent for various jobs. A degree is a good qualification, in the local language people say “yasooma” referring to somebody with a degree and the assumption is that this person went to a university and was able to learn something from there.

We have many cases where people go, get a degree and can’t do anything. Bill Gates the world’s richest man and Steve Jobs who changed the world dropped out of the university! This is a powerful message to those who legislate to keep people out of certain positions.

I was in South Africa recently and one of the glaring things that you see is lack of enterprise. Soweto one of the biggest townships has thousands of houses and hardly any shops, people buy goods in the big mall, there’s no small scale businesses that are typical in Africa.

The deep analysis of this phenomenon you realise that the South African white government made laws that barred blacks from participating in business. It’s not surprising that there’s so much poverty in these townships and its entrepreneurship that would have reduced this poverty.

It is clear that laws can be a problem; they can be used to prevent certain things from happening. My experience in Universities has also brought out the challenge of the law; the current law prescribes a Vice Chancellor and two Deputy Vice Chancellors. Once a university is established even with 100 students, the university has a Vice Chancellor and two Deputy Chancellors because the law says so. Whereas the law should have given authority to the university council to establish positions as may be required from time to time.

Today, other than Kyambogo and Makerere University the rest of the public universities have less than 10,000 students and they have two Deputy Vice Chancellors. MUBS with over 17,000 students has one Deputy Principal because the law says so. The law should come to follow and correct actions that have been done out there but not to determine how things should be done. Policy, a guide to thinking and action should not be confused with law. A law obliges some body to do. By doing so the law hinders development of ideas and slows down innovations.

It is ok in government to have policies which form the basis of doing work but the policies should be flexible to allow innovations and growth. It’s unfortunate that we are now using the law to lock out an eminent, able and popular journalist the famous Agnes Nanduutu for allegedly lack of qualifications to perform her job. This has happened in insurance, banking and other areas; we are preventing entrepreneurs from establishing businesses leaving the role to managers who are scared of risk. We are caught in a trap of inertia.

Prof. Juma Waswa Balunywa is the Principal of Makerere University Business School.