Makerere University has backtracked on earlier decision to abolish evening courses. On Friday, Makerere University Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe told journalists that the University Council had resolved that all new students starting with the coming Academic Year 2018/19 will be admitted to study on either the day programme from 8:00am to 5:00pm or on the afternoon programme from 2:00pm to 6:00pm.
This new development was received with a lot of criticism from the general public, a thing that has seen the VC issue a statement saying that the media misunderstood him.
“Colleges which fulfill quotas on day and evening programmes will be allowed to run evening programmes and they will be responsible for managing such programmes, including paying the lecturers and other staff who manage those programmes. Colleges which choose to run evening programmes will contribute only 20% of revenue to the Centre to cater for central activities,” Nawangwe said in a statement on his official Twitter account.
“Management of evening programmes directly by colleges will remove red tape which has increasingly made the evening programmes inefficient. This decision will bring back innovation to the colleges. It is the best decision for the Students because service delivery will improve,” he further twitted.
He noted that the decision by Council was to ‘REVIEW THE IMPLEMENTATION’ of evening programmes but not to abolish them.
He added that for quite some time now, MUASA has called for the abolition of evening programmes if Council is unable to pay staff teaching on these programmes.
“The majority of the evening programmes require more resources to run them than the revenue they bring,” he said, adding: “Nobody will be required to teach more than 12 hours on the day and afternoon programmes, so the issue of teaching on evening programmes for free is redundant.”
He added that staff teaching more than 12 hours a week on day and afternoon programmers will be compensated on terms to be approved by Council.
