I came across the headline story in the New Vision newspaper to day that just leaves me dumb founded. Apparetnly makerere university is to admit 5,000 more students this academic year.
Well this may not sound too bad until you read on and find out that the annual enrollment of new students will now reach 20,000!!!!!! What on earth is going on???
20 years ago Makerere had a total student population of approximately 7,000. And even then we were feeling the squeeze. But it was just great. everyone knew everyone else, the residential hall was your 'village' and you felt like you belonged to a community. The class sizes were small enough for your lecturer to know if you have been cutting classes.
As recently as recently as 7 years ago a neighbour who was then teaching at the faculty of arts, somplained that every time set his students an assignment or an exam, it meant he would have to mark 300+ scripts. He did eventually admit that he did not mark them at all, instead he looking for key words or if he was really tired he would look at the handwriting and assign marks based on that!!! I doubt he was the only one.
The mad rush by the university top raise cash through increasing the annual intake will eventually push makerere over the cliff. One cannot pretend that quality is seriously in decline across all the faculties. And becuase the university degree is a 'must have' students will put up with anything to get that piece of paper regardless of whether they actually get an education or not. Fake A-level certificates, hired scholars to do your course works or plain simple political influence are many tricks that an over loaded campus has to contend with.
When I heard that Moses Ali was a law student I laughed for days...........Ok, so I am Old Makererean snob. But seriously! I look back at how the university was able to produce quality despite all the adversity during difficult times and now I see them throw it all away in order to raise more cash.
My two cents say: just because 10,00 more people are banging on your door does not mean you have to admit them. The government should build more institutions of higher learning all over the country, that is its responsibility........SIMPLE!
The commision for higher education also needs to get its act together, because the high schools pretending to be universities are on the increase, but that is a story for another day.
