There was panic as the Vice Chancellor; Prof John Ddumba Ssentamu announced the annulment of some of the academic courses at Makerere University on Tuesday.
This was during the first day of the University’s 67th graduation ceremony held at the Freedom Square.
Prof Ddumba explained that the move is intended to streamline its teaching with the National Development Agenda to avoid duplication in the curriculum across all colleges in Uganda’s oldest institution.
During his speech, Prof Ddumba started by stressing that, in the past one year, the university had reached important decisions including scrapping some academic programmes.
“I am happy to report to you that the Senate and Council have restructured our academic programmes in line with the National Development Agenda,” Prof Ddumba said.
One of the courses merged include Bachelor of Information Sciences and Bachelor of Information systems which have been having crosscutting course units or subjects.
Although it is understood that the merging is aimed at ensuring a package that is relevant for the job market, the students whose courses were merged hang in balance as employers may look at them as lacking some skills.
This means that the number of academic programmes has been clipped from 450 to 253.
The graduation ceremony that kicked off on Tuesday will be concluded on Friday and a total of 14,897 students will be awarded degrees and diplomas of Makerere University.
Out of the 14,897, 46 per cent are female while 54 are males.
© 2017 TheUgandan. All Rights Reserved.
