While speaking to a local tabloid, Daily monitor, the Makerere University quality assurance director Dr Vincent Ssembatya revealed that some of the courses at Makerere University attracted few applicants due to low public sensitization after the University’s review of their academic programmes.
Ssembatya added that some of the programmes were merged to avoid duplications and to fully utilize the University’s human resource to deliver quality services. He added that courses like Diary Industry and Business, Poultry Industry and business, Feed Industry, Leather, Commercial Insects and Wildlife, Ranching and Meat which were independent have been merged to create one course they named Bachelor of Industrial Livestock and Business.
According to Ssembatya, the students will specialize in their areas of interest when they join the second year of the said course. Makerere University was forced to re-advertise over 40 courses due to the low number of applicants.
Some of the re-advertised courses are those from the College of Education and External Studies, College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Biosecurity, College of Humanities and Social Sciences and those from upcountry campuses in Mbale, Mbarara, Jinja and Arua.
While commenting on the low number of applicants in some courses, Ssembatya noted that the university needs to sensitize people every time it makes changes in its programmes. “We need time to tell people before we can get big numbers. Every time you make changes, people need to be sensitised. There was a curriculum review to remove duplications and we are also trying not to split resources into different classes. Some programmes got too many applicants and others got too few. Even us get surprised, we don’t know how we got to all that. But second application will help,” Ssembatya explained.
