Dear Bamugunki,
On Monday after a tip off from one lecturer, the
police raided the senate which is the highest academic decision making body of
Makerere University and arrested two academic registrar’s employees for fraud,
tempering with students marks and alteration of academic documents, word has it
that a certain lecturer while going about his business in town bumped into a
former student who had failed some core
courses in a comfy office, the lecture knowing that no one would be employed to
do that job without a good class of degree smelt a rat, a fat one at that and decided
to cross check his records to see if the re-known student had passed the
courses they picked retakes in, to his chagrin the student had not passed and
was not qualified for graduation and immediately blew the whistle.
The police later on realized that students conspired
with the officials in the senate to alter marks on the former’s transcripts
before graduation at a fee, according to information I obtained from friends
who I would not name, it is most likely that the entire process of reversing
your grade could cost one million Uganda shillings or less.
The average cost of educating a university graduate
in Uganda stands a staggering seven zero figure, at the college of engineering
design art and technology a student pursuing an engineering degree parts with
about three million shillings tuition only in a year and for the four years
they are studying their course they would have paid close to thirteen million
only tuition and functional fees neglecting the cost of feeding, accommodation,
academic secretarial work, scholastic materials to mention but a few.
The grading system in Makerere is such that any
marks obtained below 50 is a failure and necessitates a retake, the time
required to prepare for a course and write and pass examinations with a grade
of at least 70% is immense and that plainly speaking is no mean feat, and if I
chanced on an opportunity to have my grades changed to only A’s and B’s I would
have no whims at all, after all everyone in the country does the same, from
learnt professors to laymen.
I would rather part with about seven million to have
a first class university degree in Business Administration and save myself from
the stress that comes with writing seemingly trivial tests, the unproductive
time while commuting from my kikoni abode to the overcrowded class room at
COBAMS, then I would seek for a job and thereafter enroll for a short
certificate course if necessary for my job and earn my monthly hefty sums while
my colleagues are left sprawling the university in pursuit for their hard
earned degrees, I am quite sure companies do not conduct back ground checks on
their employees that way I may be able to survive on my job without any trouble
after all almost everybody in the country at any one moment has tried to earn a
living by dubious and thieving methods, from government officials, bank
executives, restaurateurs, students and even taxi conductors.
My greatest disappointment comes in at the failure
by the university authorities to organize a press conference to do a public
image campaign aimed at re furbishing the much tainted image of the Harvard of
Africa, sacking the Academic registrar or even the vice chancellor academics
taking responsibility of the blame otherwise the world over would have a
derailed perspective of the ivory tower as a training ground for dishonest,
lazy and uninspired graduates who lack the capacity to create an impact in
their respective areas of study.
Comrade you know how hard it is to come to study at
Makerere university, you spent quite a number of barrels of midnight oil to
peddle the ivory tower dream, you shunned quite a lot of those night clubs
drink-ups and studied really hard to make it to the epitome of the intellectual
pyramid and yet realize that is even easier at times if you can teach yourself
how to do things the Makerere way, so why are you still studying hard after
knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel, maybe because you are one of
the few people left in this our country who appreciate the price of hard work
and believe in the thrill of honest achievement.
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