By Dan Samanya,
KAMPALA
Kampala International University (KIU) has urged the National Council Of Higher Education (NCHE) to act upon the statement on expired courses that has gone viral on the internet.
Speaking to the congregation during the university’s 29th graduation ceremony on Saturday, Dr Al-Hajji Hassan Basajjabalaba, the CEO of Kampala International University urged NCHE to have immediate response on the matter.
“We used to enroll 30% of international students but since the statement on expired courses started to go across, we now enroll only 22%”, said Dr. Basajjabalaba.
He implored the council to remove the word “Inactive” on certain programmes and start dealing with university independently.
Last year, there was panic in Uganda after some Makerere University graduates were denied entry for master’s studies at some UK based Universities when it was realized that the courses they offered were expired. National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) would later clarify on the reports saying that the statement did not mean that the degrees were invalid stating that universities and tertiary institutions whose programmes were labelled ‘expired’ had failed to renew their programmes for accreditation and therefore, were under review.
This sparked debates in the country and the council subsequently agreed to scrap the use of the word “expired” to “Due for Review” in categorisation of academic programmes at universities and tertiary institutions pending review.
Although NCHE agreed to drop the use of the word, “Expired”, Basajjabalaba alleges that the available information on the council official website, “Inactive” demoralizes new students from applying.
According to him, this is a challenge for all universities stating that it discourages new students and parents from applying to Ugandan university.
Additionally, Basajjabalaba, who also serves as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at KIU, appealed to NCHE to be flexible when approving certain programs for accreditation.
He pointed out that an integrated pharmacy program, which they submitted for approval about two years ago, has yet to receive a response from the council. Basajjabalaba wondered why the council is not allowing such new programs to run in the country, despite being taught elsewhere in the world and being beneficial to the country.
