Makerere students to register without tuition

Alex Gahima and Innocent Anguyo

WITH effect from the next academic semester, Makerere University's privately sponsored students will be allowed to register irrespective of whether they've paid a penny to the institution or not. 

The seventeen-week semester starts on Saturday January 31 and ends on Saturday May 30.

During registration, students select the papers (course units) they are expected to sit in a particular academic semester.

The registration process undertaken every academic semester is conducted online for continuing students and manually for freshmen in their maiden semester at the university. Students who do not register are presumed to have shunned studies for that semester.

The freshly instituted Makerere University Revenue Collection Unit came up with the new policy that also allows private students to register before paying fees, according to Prof Edward Kirumira, the representative of Humanities' College Principals on Senate, Makerere's supreme academic body.

In an interview on Tuesday, Kirumira said the new registration policy will empower administrators to plan for the entire semester since the number of students will be established at the start of the academic quarter.

“Initially, by the start of the semester, few students register and you may allocate a small lecturer room for a course that eventually has many students. With this new policy, you may know the number of your students and plan for them accordingly," said Kirumira.

Under the initial policy, privately sponsored students were required to either pay full tuition fees and register for all papers in a semester or clear at least 60% of their tuition fees and register for 60% of the required total credit units.

By the eighth week of the semester, students could only register if they had cleared 80% of their fees. 100% was the amount of fees required for registration in the last months of the semester.

The online registration system which is linked to the students' respective financial statuses would only permit registration for students who had met their financial obligation to the university.

Freshmen were expected to complete the payment of tuition and other fees by the second week; otherwise they would cease to be students of Makerere. Although freshmen register manually in their maiden semester at the university, in the subsequent semester, they are expected to register online.

Students, Kirumira however said, under the new policy are compelled to complete fees in the eighth week. A student who doesn't fulfill this requirement will not be allowed to do assignments and sit for exams.

"After the eighth week, students will be issued with special cards that they will use to access university facilities. Those who wouldn't have paid their fees by this time will not register," said Kirumira.

Graduation

Following several complaints filed by students over omission of names from the 65th graduation list, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) and College of Business and Management Science (CoBAMS) on Saturday added about 200 names to the final booklet.

According to Kirumira who is also the Principal of CHUSS, names of all students who had met their financial and academic requirements for graduation have been added to the booklet.

Kirumira attributed the delayed issuance of the graduation list to systemic and human resource challenges at Makerere.  Uganda's oldest university is expected to graduate over 10,000 students from January 21 to 23.