Makerere university: 1922-2012

Today, as the University marks 90 years, some look nostalgically to its past to analyse the challenges it is facing today yet quite a substantial see many bright years ahead for the institution once called the Harvard of Africa.

Speaking on Saturday President Museveni emphasised that Makerere must now move towards more science and technological innovations not only for its own survival but if it is going to continue playing a key role in the world of academics.

Events for the 90 years of Makerere started on Thursday with an invitational lecture on “The role of the academia in building a sustainable private sector: A case study of Dr Martin Aliker.” Mr William Kalema delivered the lecture to a capacity audience in the University Main Hall.

Walking the journey of Makerere from 1922, he reminisced its humble beginnings from a name many of the recent graduates and current students may have never known once identified the institution whose academic reputation they proudly wear “Nyangi Eradde.”

The institution began as, Makerere College School- a technical school to train artisans such as carpenters, brick layers but not plumbers or engineers because by 1922, Uganda neither had running water or electricity. He told how “elegantly dressed students wore shorts, pattice on their legs but bare foot.”

Grander ambition:

It soon became clear that after ten years of schooling and then end up as an artisan was not satisfactory, so Makerere became academic. “All qualifications in Education, Agriculture, and Veterinary and Human medicine were diplomas. The holders of these qualifications went out to be assistants to the colonial masters who had degrees from their various universities in their country,” said Mr Kalema.

It was until 1947 that the Carr-Saunders Commission recommended that Makerere becomes a university offering degrees of the University of London. By mid-1930’s, the institution had already started admitting students from Kenya, Tanganyika (Now Tanzania) and Zanzibar.

Unlike today, when the average age of students attending universities is 20, the average age at the time was thirty. The students were those who had left their own homes and families and they were not only mature but also serious about their studies.

At the time, the equivalent of A-Level was done at Makerere for two years on top of the twelve years in school. The year 1949, this was when the institution decided that students in second year will finish with Diplomas and those that had joined the university in the same year would start on a degree course.

The first recipients of a Bachelor’s degrees spent five years at the institution. However, this was changed years later when the duration was reduced to three years after a few selected schools started offering A-level studies.

At the time of the start of the degree courses, the student population stood just under 500-housed under Sseppuuya, Bamugye, Nsubuga and Sejongo Halls all in the southern part of the campus. The dominant schools that sent students to the university were in Uganda- Nyapea, St. Peters Tororo, Jinja College Mwiri, Namilyago Boys School, Kisubi, Old Kampala, Kings College Buddo, Nyakasura School and St Leo’s Kyegobe.

Two schools from Kenya, Alliance High School and Mangu Boys School sent student to the best university in the region while; Zanzibar Secondary School, Tabora boys contributed students from Tanzania.
Today, the situation has changed with at least 20,000 schools from within the country and those from all over the continent and the world able to send students to Makerere.

On campus Halls of residence have not only grown to 12 but have been dominated by private hostels that dot all the sides of the hill where Makerere stands. Private rentals some as far away as Kasubi, Nakulabye, Bwaise and Kawempe are accommodating thousands of students.

The first twenty or so years at the university were an all-boys affair. It was in the mid 1940’s that a consideration for the admission of females was seriously considered with the first lot enrolling in 1945. All were adult students and two had been trained as teachers at Buloba Teacher Training College.

The first female student to qualify to enter Makerere was Catherine Senkatuka from Buddo, followed by Sarah Ntiro who also went on to become the first female to get a University degree in East and Central Africa.

Today, female students are competing favourably with boys after an effort bolstered by an additional 1.5 points awarded to female A-level leavers to give them a higher competitive advantage aimed at breaking male dominance but also give women a chance in a male dominated world. The 1.5 point scheme started in 1995.

The Female Scholarship Fund whose current patron is Lady Sylvia Nagginda, the Queen of Buganda also helps coordinate other initiatives to enable female students access tuition and other support. One of the most important aspects of the university at the time was that the teaching staff was all white and the students all black except for the Zanzibaris.

It is rumoured that two very bright Zanzibari Clinical students were deliberately failed and discontinued from the university because they were of mixed blood, at the time referred to as Mullatos [people from black and white parents]. This was because the British did not want them to be classified as whites and hence have privileges of the masters.

Dr Martin Aliker while giving his honorary lecture speech, he said that the current liberalness with which the university treats students was unheard of during its colonial days. “Today we talk of retaking exams, female students taking maternity leave, students being excused from doing an exam because they have lost a family member. These are luxuries that did not exist,” Dr Aliker observed.

In the professional fields, Agriculture probably because it was the main occupation of many Africans and would produce cash crops to the colonial government, was a favoured course by the colonial administrators as was education to provide the mass of clerical workers.

Though Veterinary and Human medicine were already existent, the leaders of the university who at the time were British, were reluctant to award the degrees lest the Africans become equal to the British vets and doctors and there by demand for better pay.

It was after independence that the situation changed. The Licentiate which the doctors had gotten before being converted into degrees with the stroke of a pen. Traces of the first graduation ceremony are scanty but however, university officials say it must not have been above 20 students.

In contrast, today, the university unleashes a minimum of 10,000 students every January. However, the challenges ahead for the institution are still enormous. To start with, the quality of students that is produced after they reach the field and cannot practice what they have learnt in class.

To address this, the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academics and Administration says that the institution needs a mechanism of partnering with organisations to take on students at an early education stage as a way to strengthen the internship program.

Cases of cheating of examinations accompanied by hiring of mercenaries to sit examinations and do research for students have been continuously been echoed from the public. The University is still interlocked in internal wrangles which have rendered many systems in the institution irrelevant.

Officiating the opening ceremony, President Yoweri Museveni urged the university to continue venturing in the science and technology research as the only way of survival.

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