Makerere University has decentralized the issuance of transcripts to its graduates in a bid to make the process more convenient. The university Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe said on Monday that the respective Colleges will now be responsible for issuing the transcripts as opposed to previously where all transcripts were accessed from the Senate building.
The bureaucratic and often tiring process saw thousands of graduates toss back and forth for weeks at the campus, and queuing up at a single office so as to get the most important academic document.
The document which bears the seal of the university Academic Registrar is a certification that one completed their course of study at the university. It also details specific course units and their corresponding grades, credit units, the Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) for different semesters and the individual’s class of Award.
Prof. Nawangwe told journalists during a press briefing on Monday that the University Central Management took the decision to decentralize the issuance academic transcripts “to ease service delivery”.
“With this arrangement, the Academic Registrar will send printed transcripts to the Office of the Principal in the respective Colleges where graduates will pick them,” the Vice Chancellor said.
He also revealed that the university is working out modalities to ensure that students who are eligible for graduation can pick their transcripts before the January graduation day which hasn’t been the case.
“We want for students to get their transcripts before graduation because we know that some of the employers need them,” Prof. Nawangwe noted.
The university Academic Registrar Prof. Alfred Masikye Namoah said that the Senate is currently recording and verifying all the transcripts before the decentralized issuance is effected.
“When the recording is done, we shall then determine he cut off before we send the transcripts to the Colleges,” Namoah told the press.
Meanwhile the university has resumed the issuance of the transcripts of graduands from the previous years having halted the process after mass alteration of students’ academic results on the online system.
The university has confirmed that following a verification exercise of the marks by the various Colleges which cross referenced online marks and hard copies, the issuance has since resumed.
Makerere is currently designing a new Results Management System that will have more solid buffers against alteration of marks.