Museveni directs Makerere on accurate fees structure

By Innocent Anguyo

President Yoweri Museveni has given the Makerere University leadership up to the end of this month to furnish him with the unit cost of educating each student, with the purpose of establishing an accurate fees structure for the institution.

Speaking to Saturday Vision in an exclusive interview on Thursday, Makerere University vice-chancellor Prof. John Ddumba Ssentamu said the President issued the directive on Thursday morning.

“The President advised that the Ministry of Education and Sports, the National Planning Authority and officials from the President’s Office should be involved in this process,” Ddumba said in a statement circulated at the general staff assembly held on Thursday.

Earlier, on August 21, Museveni had directed the university’s leadership to compute the unit cost of training a student, following complaints from the students’ body and members of the public that Uganda’s oldest public university had been hiking fees without consulting relevant entities.

At the August meeting held at State House, Entebbe, the Makerere University team comprised the chancellor, Prof.

Mondo Kagonyera, a representative of the students’ guild, members of the University Council and the top management headed by Ddumba.

At the time of the meeting, Makerere was a fertile ground for riots following a 10% hike in tuition fees for all the first-year private students joining the institution in the 2014/2015 academic year.

Subsequently, Museveni agreed to shoulder the burden of paying the additional 10% fees slapped on the 21,0000 students, ordering the university to come up with the cost of training a student within a month.

Ddumba had said the fees for the next semester would be based on the unit cost and that the President had paid the additional fees because many students had not been notified of the increment early, yet the university could not alter its 2014/2015 budget, which captured the fees increment as the source of revenue.

The current estimate of training a student at Makerere University, Ddumba said, is sh6m annually for humanities and sh12m for science disciplines.

The President is yet to pay the sh2.4b to cover the 10% increment for the students. Ddumba said they would beat the President’s deadline.

Directive on duplication

The Museveni has also directed the university to restructure its programmes and furnish him with a report at the end of this month.

Ddumba said the Makerere University Senate, the institution’s highest academic body, had put in place a committee to review all the programmes. He said the report would be completed at the end of November. “This process requires wide consultations because we are going to scrap some courses and merge others,” Ddumba explained.

Addressing Makerere staff on Thursday, Dr. Muhammad Kiggundu, the general staff assembly chairperson, said they would submit the restructured list of programmes to the President within two weeks because they had the capacity to work fast.

“We would like to get in touch with other universities to help them to restructure their programmes too since the issue of duplication cuts across the entire higher education sector,” said Kiggundu.

Last month, while fl agging off 200 students to Israel for internship, Museveni directed public universities to scrap “irrelevant” courses that do not contribute to national development.

He identifi ed some of the irrelevant courses as Bachelor of Confl ict Resolution and Bachelor of Women and Gender Studies.

Staff arrears

At the Thursday general assembly, Makerere teaching and non-teaching staff resolved to give the university two weeks to clear their allowance arrears for the months of September and October amounting to sh5.4b.

The university’s senior publicist, Ritah Namisango, said the institution was committed to paying the arrears despite the shortfall in revenue.

The staff also resolved that the university should implement the staff health insurance scheme by next semester.