It’s now three weeks since the premier university in Uganda was reopened, not for a new semester, but for resumption of the one that was halted by President Museveni’s order which followed a myriad of strikes by students, teaching and non-teaching staff.
The two-month closure mainly affected students who have been rushed through course outlines, with some lecturers foregoing teaching somethings this semester because the time has not been enough.
But how does Africa’s third-best univeristy walk into this? A combination of interpretivism and positivism will give one a better approach to where the woes at Makerere University are rooted. Anyone will rush to say: there is financial mismanagement at the institution! But how does one arrive at such a conclusion yet “no single individual” knows the exact number of students in the campus?
Dr Rwendaire committee has on several occasions swore to come up with a report with recommendations that will bring an end to Makerere problems, and it deserves a credit for coming up with the head count exercise. It’s one of the ways of achieving it’s goals.
Makerere students should get back to their right senses and cooperate with this committee by offering themselves for counting because it’s after this exercise that the whole world will know the exact figure of Makerere’s enrollment, and a possible solution can be got there after.
It’s again after this head count, if it’s done accurately, that the world can also come to know about the exact amount of money the university’s management collects from students per semester, whether enough or insufficient. Currently, not even the academic registrar who is responsible for admitting students every academic year, can tell how many students the university has got.
Some people argue that, “why can’t the committee use the online registration results to get the number of students?” But how plausible is this when some students, including third years, are looking for forms to register with the university manually because they missed the online registration deadline, while others even don’t know how to register themselves?
So if Makerere students are really after seeing their university out of problems, let them, starting with today January 23, present themselves for counting. It’s such a great move.
