Makerere Vice Chancellor, Prof. Venansius Baryamureba

Makerere University has announced that in the next semester that begins later in August Makerere University will have 99% of its undergraduate courses taught by full time staff.

This comes a few months after Makerere decided to dismiss most of the part time lecturers as a move to enhance the teaching standards of the University.

While Speaking to journalists at Makerere University, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Vanansisus Baryamureeba has said that the this new development of having more of its staff lecturers teach undergraduate courses is one of the measures that the University has implemented under its quality assurance policy.

He says the university has already released all the money that the various faculties and institutions under the university need for teaching these various undergraduate courses.

Many dream of making it to Makerere University

He says these staff lecturers that teach undergraduate courses will be required to teach the minimum number of hours per semesters and conduct all mandatory tutorials since the university is set to give equal emphasis to both progressive assessment of students and final examination results in determining students’ final marks for the semester.

Prof. Baryamureeba also says the university has completed full revision of the curricula of all academic programmes at Makerere University with the exception of the programmes offered at Makerere University Business School.

There have been many concerns amongst Ugandans that Makerere University once a highly prestigious university in Africa mainly in the 1970s, 80s and 90 had moved on a downward spiral in terms of its academic potent and quality of services at the university with its positions on the world rankings worsening as the years went. But recent international university webometrics rankings have shown a big improvement since  the new Acting Vice Chancellor Prof. Baryamureeba took over.

The latest Webometrics rankings that came out in July 2010 ranked Makerere the 13th best university in Africa up from 15th position in Africa in February 2010 and 2,158th in the world up from 2,658th position in February 2010. It is the only University in Uganda among the top 100 best African Universities.

By Tiberindwa Zakaria, Ultimate Media