Is your child’s name on the graduation list?

By Carol Natukunda
HOLD your breath! There are stories of a wasted opportunity; stories of deceit and betrayal to parents and guardians. As thousands of Makerere University students graduate this week, parents should think twice when they find their children’s names missing from the graduation list.
After failing to make it through university successfully, some students masquerade as graduates. The mathematics is easy — wear a gown, take stage-managed pictures and celebrate with the rest on graduation day.
A young man was admitted for law at Makerere University in 2001. Everything seemed to be heading in the right direction until his father lost his job halfway through the academic year. The young man borrowed money from his friends to enable him pay tuition.
“He was unable to refund his friends’ money, so one of them reported him to the Police. The Police paraded at the Senate Building during examination time. When he got to know they were hunting for him, he did not show up.
“He tried to come back the following year to register so that he could re-sit the papers, but the university asked him to first clear with the Police. Feeling scared, perhaps, he never went back,” a former classmate says.
One year after his classmates graduated, the young man, who was temporarily employed in the communication sector had a picture taken on his ‘graduation day’ hanging in his sitting room!
Macklean (second name withheld), a commerce student, was expelled after engaging in examination malpractice in 2004. To date, nobody, except her close friend Christine, knows about it.
“When the semester ends, she goes home like the rest of us and reports back with tuition and the hostel fee. She uses the money to go out with friends, buy expensive clothes and live a good life. She occasionally walks through campus with a clipboard and sometimes attends lectures just to fit in,” Christine says.
“I cannot tell her parents about it, I don’t have the courage. Her father is a carpenter and her mother a farmer. I am sure they would faint, I don’t know what she is going to do,” she adds.
A 25-year-old man regrets why he spent his tuition in a pub.
“When I joined university, my peers said it was fashionable to lie to parents about tuition. I would ask for sh2,000,000 instead of shs750, 000, but even then, I did not pay tuition. When my dad passed away, I couldn’t explain to my guardian that I had wasted a whole year. My guardian knew I would finish school in two years. I had applied for a dead year...so I was not registered as a student at the university,” he recounts.
“I decided to continue receiving tuition and pretended I was studying. On graduation day, I made sure my guardians sat at the back in the tent so they would not notice that my name had not been read.”
“We celebrated, but my plan was to reapply for admission at another university and pretend I was doing a Masters. I have been saving for this,” he adds.
The desire to get a degree from a distinguished institution of higher learning is not merely a definition of vanity, but also a means of gaining status.
Statistics show that the number of students who enroll at university is higher than the number that graduates.
For instance, a 2004 Makerere University Annual Report shows that out of about 13,000 students who enrolled that year, 8,131 graduated. Some students drop out with genuine reasons like missing marks, retakes and lack of fees.
A source from The Academic Registrar’s Office says students’ names are not included on the lists because some of them join other universities along the way.
In the Faculty of Arts, about 5,843 post graduate and undergraduates enrolled for the 2001/2002 academic year, but about only 3,000 graduated.
The 2003 report by UNESCO and International Institute for Educational Planning, entitled Combating Academic Fraud; Towards a Culture of Integrity, says the reason this happens is because of the absence of institutional or national policies and lax supervision.
“Pressure on individuals from families and society’s demand for skilled and educated workers is too much. There are inconsistencies in defining proper behaviour and lack of rules to enforce it,” the report says.
But many university administrators are tight-lipped on the issue; others say they are not aware of the problem, hence dismiss it as mere propaganda.
Ben Twinomugisha, the Associate Dean, Makerere University’s, Faculty of Law, says “There could be cases where students misuse tuition, but some parents check on their children’s performance. We also display graduation lists ahead of time. I think parents need to be more vigilant.”
A head of department at Kampala International University says, “At the university, we do not roll call like high schools do. Even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to follow up students to find out if they are attending class. Students are mature enough to make personal responsibilities.”
James Bulenzibuto, the spokesperson of Kyambogo University, says, “We list legible candidates in our files and later on in the graduation books.”
At Uganda Christian University Mukono, Ben Bella Illakut, the head of the Mass Communication Department says, “Things have been tightened. You cannot do that.”
“There are some students who still want to hang around the university after they have completed, but each department ensures that we have the students’ names and pictures in a magazine.”
Richard Rubabaza, an accountant, says institutions and departments should put in place penalties and more rigid rules like primary and high schools do.
Ends