By Charles Etukuri
Makerere University vice-chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe has broken his silence over claims they are among the local universities offering courses that are not accredited by the National Council of Higher Education (NCHE).
Media reports on Monday indicated that this had led to the denial of admission to one or two of Makerere University graduates to higher degrees by some European universities, which has raised concern in the public
In an internal memo to members of staff of Makerere University on Monday, Nawangwe says they are working with NCHE to correct errors on their website and hoped this will be done soon. However, he urged the university to clean its own house.
“Currently, Makerere University is in the press, along with other Ugandan universities, for the wrong reasons. A number of our academic programmes are not accredited by the National Council of Higher Education (NCHE) and this has led to the denial of admission to one or two of our graduates to higher degrees by some European universities and this has understandably raised concern among members of the public,” Nawangwe says.
He adds: “This problem has been due to laxity partly on our side and on the side of the NCHE. On our side, there have been unacceptable delays in the review of some programmes by departments, schools and colleges, and occasionally at the Senate level for re-accreditation as required by law. On the side of NCHE, there have been delays in processing programmes for accreditation and also delays in updating their website”.
According to Nawangwe, the programmes that have appeared on the NCHE website as expired include: those that have either been discontinued or merged with other programmes; programmes that have already been submitted to NCHE for accreditation and programmes that are at different levels of review at Makerere University.
“We are working with the NCHE to correct errors on their website and we hope this will be done soon. However, we must clean up our own house. Colleagues with programmes whose accreditation has expired have been alerted by the Academic Registrar and given a deadline to submit the reviewed programmes. The colleagues concerned should adhere to the deadline that has been given,” he says.
Nawangwe adds that Makerere University had, “not had a system to track the expiry of the accreditation of our many academic programmes, leading to some programmes being overdue for accreditation for up to six years. This is simply unacceptable. However, the Academic Registrar has now developed a database on the status of the accreditation of our programmes.
All the responsible colleagues should monitor the accreditation of programmes under their jurisdiction in order to avoid a repeat of this embarrassing situation. Despite the bad press that this situation has caused, I wish to assure you that Makerere University programmes are highly rated internationally and we will overcome the current challenges as We Build for the Future.”
