A day to the Makerere University’s 68th graduation ceremony, the university management has confirmed that graduands will for the first time receive their academic transcripts during the week long ceremony.
A total of 14,000 students are set to graduate from Uganda’s biggest institution of higher learning between tomorrow, Tuesday and Friday across different disciplines.
This year, the University will give out a total of 69 PhDs, which is less compared to those from previous year, according to the Vice Chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe.
Last year, Prof Nawangwe announced that Makerere would start giving out academic transcripts to graduands during graduation as opposed to a year later, as has been the case.
The process of giving out these documents has not only been ineffective but it has also been inconveniencing for thousands of graduates who had to brave long queues sometimes for weeks at the Senate Building.
On Monday, Nawangwe told the press; “Some people have been asking me whether I will live to my promised that students will get their transcripts on graduation”.
“Let me tell the whole country that all the students who will graduatewill get their transcripts,” he added.
The transcripts will be sent to the respective Colleges so as to reduce the time spent on distributing them.
The Vice Chancellor also allayed earlier fears that about 4,000 students from Makerere Business School (MUBS) would not graduate due to failure to remit more than Shs 6.2 billion in functional fees over the last four years.
He revealed that management at both institutions had settled the issue and that the said students will graduate.
“MUBS students will graduate because we have sorted our issues with MUBS and agreed on how to proceed to reconcile our positons. We have got the commitment from the top management of MUBS,” Nawangwe said to the press.
“So, Council has given is the authority then to graduate their students”.
But some 20 students who have been studying Bachelors of Tourism from the Makerere University, Jinja campus will miss out from this year’s graduation as a result of a technical problem.
Nawangwe explained that there was a problem with the coding as the program was changed along the way, affecting some of the students who were on the older program.
“When the results were presented, the coding could not tally with what is in the system. I want to assure the students and the public that we are doing everything possible to resolve that issue to endure that we issue transcripts to all students in goof time,” he said.
“Unfortunately, they will not be in the graduation book and they will not graduate this time”.
As opposed to previous years where students have often colluded with university staff to alter academic marks, management says that there will be no such case this year.
This is attributed to measures that were undertaken to secure the system in a addition to dismissing a staffer who was found to have been aiding the malpractice.