The minimum prerequisite for university entry is at least two principle passes or its equivalent in case of those who didn’t take a straight education matrix. With Uganda’s liberalised university system and a myriad of universities that are run more as business entities than educational institutions, the question of who should be admitted to a specific course begs a lot of idiomatic soul search. Basic business sense envisions success as a function of large numbers, in this case the more students a university is capable of attracting reflects positively on its bank account balance. That is the beginning of the quandary in respect of the standards of some of our private universities. It’s a fact, admission to private universities is not as studious and competitive as public universities, most especially for foreign students. Most foreign students who only read what is written on university websites may not have a lucid picture of the university as compared to a local student who knows the capacity and status of a specific university in comparison to others.
This lack of a clear picture and information about a particular university leads to foreign students shifting from one university to another in a single academic year, when they eventually realise that the information consumed online doesn’t match with reality on ground in terms of structures, staffing and content. There are universities that use pictures of private hostels and buildings that don’t have any slight connection to them to hoodwink gullible foreign students, when they reach here, to their consternation, lectures are taken under trees and tents.
Talking to different Lecturers who have taught in both public and private universities, there is a clear sense of despair with regard to how to balance content in the lecture theater and the business mind of the university administration, given the educational backgrounds of foreign students who form the bulk of some of the private universities.
Whereas foreign students in Uganda come from all over the world, the biggest chunk comes from African countries. The challenge is that different countries have varying education systems and invariably different standards. A case scenario is Kenya which has 8.4.4 system where a student leaves form four to join university, this puts him at a disadvantage with a Ugandan student who goes through 7.4.2.4 system. There are students from Arabic, Francophone and Congolese speaking countries who cannot communicate in English but are expected to answer questions in English.
There is one University famed for recruiting students from Kenya and Tanzania where the students use more Swahili than English to communicate even in class, this sips into the examination, where Swahili tends to influence the articulation levels. This is the source of the problem. Take the example of a student admitted to do a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, normally students would have been exposed to some of the basic principles of economics/commerce at either O’level or A’level, but most foreign students, due to their education systems lack this background, though there is an attempt to give such students what is termed as “remedials or “foundation” although it doesn’t place them at the same footing as the local students in appreciating these basic principles.
Again, there is talk of students who pursue Bachelor of Arts in Economics (BA,Econ) at a certain some university who cannot define the concept of Economics or explain the most basic principle why a demand curve slopes from left to right. The muddle here for the lecturer is where to begin from when faced with such ‘raw’ students. Economics is a subject that involves statistical or mathematical insights, so how can such students grasp course units like econometrics, quantitative methods or mathematical economics?
The only obvious outcome is that these students are going to fail, something that puts the lecturer on a collision course with the administration. The administration expects positive results yet the lecturer has little leeway to extract these results from his students. At this point, quality is sacrificed at the altar of doing what is “right”. Either the lecturer sets only basic or elementary exams or the awarding and grading system is compromised in order to safeguard their jobs.
There is a scenario where almost the whole class which has about 70% foreigners failed econometrics, the examination committee sought for an explanation from the Lecturer, it turned out that he had nothing to do about the quality of students, however the proprietor retorted that “I did not give you a job to kill my business”. He ordered that a way be devised to make the students pass. The lecturer refused and resigned. To his surprise, all students passed and even graduated without any retakes.
Most foreign students from DR Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda and some East African countries have serious problems to even understand exam questions. Some end up answering all the four questions on half a page, others just copy the questions to the answer sheet without a single answer. These automatically fail yet they constitute the bulk of the percentage in class. Foreign students pay in dollars and are more reliable than the locals, so they are the cash cow of Universities and are indispensable. The conundrum is how do you balance the standards and the bank account? Certainly one has to be sacrificed thus affecting quality of our local graduates who incidentally excel effortlessly because they have an edge over foreign students due to their A-level background.
The other challenge is the quality of staff in some of the universities. It should be noted that quality lecturers is expensive and most universities tend to look for ‘cheap’ staff. Some universities are using their fresh graduates as lecturers instead of being teaching assistants, these are inexperienced and prone to administration manipulations. The National Council for Higher Education stipulates specific qualifications for the different levels of the teaching staff. This explains, among others, why universities that have been around for over ten years don’t have a charter.
There is a university that recently got a charter, but information coming out, is that in order to beat the stringent qualification threshold, the University hired retired professors and doctors from the East African region for the sole purpose of hoodwinking the council and after the meeting that confirmed the charter application, all of them left for their home countries leaving the University with its “student staff”. Most of these universities don’t give employment contracts and only pay after handing in results of the previous semester moreover in installments. This puts lectures in an awkward position where they have to deal with rich foreign students who are faced with the reality of failing. That is why there are stories of money for marks.
There is a tendency in private universities to accept students from other universities in the middle of the year or semester commonly referred to as “transfer students”. It’s common with foreign students who may have failed papers, fees defaulters or those who have never had enough contact hours to guarantee them an examination card from the strict universities. Since the ability to pay principle is applied, such a student will be admitted regardless of his ability.
There are universities that pay staff at the end of each semester, that means after four months what is termed as “package” based on the number of units a lecturer teaches, the formula applied is that the first course unit is rated at Shs350.000 and the subsequent course units are charged Shs150.000 each for the whole semester and this includes transport. So, assuming you teach three course units, you are entitled to Shs650.000 for the four months in a semester, a pay that cannot be given to a nursery teacher. No serious lecturer can accept peanuts, so, universities resort to “student staff” who are upstarts and can take anything thrown at them. This has greatly affected the standards.
The Shs650.000 includes the transport. What it means is that depending on the mode of transport and the number of times you have to teach, at the end of semester you are left with half of the money, which sometimes is also paid in installments. That is how grim the situation is. It is surprising that some universities teach many courses that are not accredited by the National Council of Higher Education and students are graduating each year. A number of private universities don’t have external examiners and there is no mechanism to modulate examinations. The resident lecturers take the final decision on the award of marks. It should be noted that because of the paltry pay, most lecturers don’t teach but instead send handouts which he peruses through once in a while. Lack of the external examiners gives slack to lecturers to grade marks according to their whims. This scenario is the kind that led to the unfortunate incident of the Mombasa mayor Al Hassan Joho debacle.
University Standards are a construct of facilities, but some universities share premises with business like salons, video libraries, workshops that affect concentration and delivery. Because of the demography of Kampala, some areas attract foreign students more than others. Makindye and Rubaga divisions attract many foreign students due to availability of affordable rentals and hostels. This has also led to a high concentration of universities in these areas causing cut-throat competition for students. A quick scan of the area of a radius of five kilometers from Nsambya as the centre, reveals that it has thirteen universities, some in less than a kilometer from each other. Such competition compels universities to admit students of questionable standards in order to balance their books.
Unless the National Council of Higher Education increases its monitoring and evaluation vigilance, the urge for universities to break-even will be the collapse of standards that we badly need and fight to safeguard if we have to remain a beacon of excellence in the region.
