Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, the Vice Chancellor of Makerere University has admitted that the laxity on their end as management and staff of the institution is costing the University its prestigious image.
He made the communication as he met with members of Makerere University academic staff on Monday, May 22, 2023.
“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. This problem has been due to laxity partly on our side and also on the side of the NCHE,” Professor Nawangwe said.
The Vice Chancellor said that, there have been unacceptable delays in the review of some programs by departments, schools, colleges, and occasionally at the Senate level for re-accreditation as required by law.
He added that, on the side of the NCHE, there have been delays in processing programs for accreditation and also delays in updating their website.
Prof. Nawangwe said that, the programs which have appeared on the NCHE website and the media as expired were because some were discontinued and merged with others, some are still pending accreditation by the NCHE and some are at different levels of review by the University.
He assured the public that the university is in connection with NCHE to have errors corrected on their website.
Prof. Nawangwe called upon the academic staff and the Makerere University Management Team to rectify all errors by ensuring that there are timely reviews of courses and submission to NCHE for accreditation.
He noted that the lack of a tracking system to monitor the expiry of accreditation of many academic programs has led to an overdue of some programs for accreditation for six years, which is simply unacceptable.
Prof. Nawangwe said that the University Academic Registrar has developed a database on the status of accreditation of all academic programs, adding that the academic staff should monitor the accreditation of programs under their jurisdiction in order to avoid a repeat of the same.
