I read with consternation that Makerere University is not taking in 16,000 qualified students due to lack of capacity (â16,000 to miss Makerere,â The New Vision, front page, April 29). How sad! This illustrates how far away we are from having integrated planning programmes for our country. It is an indictment of government, the legislature and institutions such as Makerere University, which boasts of a planning department. After all those students did not materialize out of the blue. The majority of them were born 18 years ago, just about the time that the NRM took the helm of government. Slowly but surely, they went through the pains of survival to their fifth birthday. [About 180 per 1000 of those had died by their fifth birthday.] They entered primary schools and in 1997, 211,749 of them sat for their Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). Seventy per cent of them passed. However, only 42 per cent or 87,231 went on to a secondary school the following year.
Surely, during those 18 years when they were growing up and advancing through the education system, someone must have been aware of the thin air at the top of the system. We chose to focus on the lower echelons of our education system, that is, primary and secondary education, most of which do not offer vocational training at all. To its credit, the Ministry of Education devised a strategic plan for secondary education, which would increase enrolment in the first four years of secondary school from 149,840 in 1999 to 262,000 students by 2003. More secondary schools were built, most of which were private but licensed by the Ministry of Education. By some estimates, there are at least 1200 secondary schools, half of which are government-aided. While secondary school enrolment surged, there were no similar plans for tertiary education. There were no plans for expanding both public and private tertiary institutions to absorb the surging number of students from secondary schools. The Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act 2001 did little more than provide for streamlining the establishment, administration and standardisation of universities and other tertiary institutions. There was no master plan for building new tertiary institutions and rehabilitating old ones, especially technical institutes, except for the construction of Mbarara University of Science and Technology. The only expansion that took place, albeit by the ingenuity and, one might argue, serendipity of one faculty head, was the enrolment of private students at Makerere University. Moreover, the majority of private students were enrolled in courses that are not fundamental to national development. By 1997, for example, only 15 per cent of all students in tertiary institutions were enrolled in science, math and engineering. Priority was given to academic education. Technical institutes were marginalized and most of them are now decrepit. Technical education became highly underrated in favour of academic education. Yet, every nation needs good technical education to enhance economic development. We now not only have a situation where most college graduates end up unemployed or in jobs for which they are overqualified, but we have thousands who are qualified to enrol in public universities but they cannot. The immediate challenge is to channel those students who just missed out on joining public universities into meaningful pursuits that are relevant to our national goals. The importance of having them join technical institutes cannot be overemphasized in an era of globalisation, which require high technical skills. For the long haul, we need to prepare for the more than 460,000 students who will seek admission in tertiary institutions in the year 2015. We must set up more polytechnic institutes and colleges to prepare our citizens to have a niche in the global economy. Our national strategy should include the provision of at least one quality polytechnic institute in every district in the country. In addition, all existing schools in the country should begin to provide vocational training to the students. We must define a national policy on career and technical education and its purpose. The National Council for Higher Education should be asked to assume the responsibility for developing a national policy on career and technical education, overseen by, on in collaboration with, appropriate parliamentary committees. The National Council for Higher Education should be composed of principals from the relevant ministries, preferably all the ministries. N¬±êï‰Ç²,µçhžØ^"wèr‰§zÜ(®Hm¶Ÿÿà "ú ¢g(º
