The board of the School of Law at Makerere University has rejected a call from the institution’s vice chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, to increase their enrollment of students from 320 to 500 as a means of increasing income in the central pool.
The principal of the School of Law, Assoc. Prof. Christopher Mbazira, in a statement to the media, said the school is incapacitated to undertake the said call by the vice chancellor.
In the statement, almost half of his teaching staff do not have offices at the school from where to attend to students, keep their materials, prepare for lectures and mark tests.
In addition to that, his own office ceiling caved in some years back and has never been repaired. He blames the University Council for taking the money the Law school had saved to create more teaching and office space.
In a reply dated July 20th to Prof Nawangwe, Mbazira cited the numerous challenges he believes the university should rectify before suggesting enrollment increments.
“The staff attend to students in their vehicles and use the same when waiting to lecture (students). It is now more than 10 years the school continues to operate in constrained and unsafe space, infested with termites and a leaking roof. A few years ago, the ceiling of the principal’s office collapsed. The administration block is a health hazard, the School of Law building is condemned.”
All this notwithstanding, Nawangwe argues that the university’s teaching space has increased 40 times from what it used to be in 2006 after the construction of three central teaching facilities to accommodate more students.
“The school board took note of the fact that the strategic direction of Makerere is to become a research-led university, putting emphasis on postgraduate studies and research. Increasing the number of undergraduates runs counter to this. The expectation is that the university will gradually reduce undergraduate numbers, increase postgraduate recruitment and build its research capacity. The decision of the board was that the university needs to address the above challenges before the numbers are increased,” Mbazira said.
The Makerere University council approved that their strategy is to be a research-led institution which concentrates on postgraduate programmes rather than on the undergraduate courses and consequently advised the cut in undergraduate admissions by over 10%.
With over 1,500 law students from year one to the fourth year, Mbazira argues that adding on students will overstretch the already stretched 35 academic staff which will ultimately compromise delivery of quality education.
He also suggested that the university should boost the staff morale by paying their arrears accrued from teaching evening classes and internship supervision.
