Makerere University has suspended services of external examiners for all its degree programs due to inadequate financing.
A June 7 letter from Mr Charles Barugahare, the university secretary, stated that the decision was agreed upon after a central management finance committee that sat on May 29 found a shortfall of more than Shs4b.
“Management agreed that in view of the financial constraints, external examinations should be deferred until management provides further guidance. You are accordingly informed of the management decision,” Barugahare said.
Every Department at Makerere must have an external examiner who must visit the department at least once in each academic year, for at least one week.
The external examiner looks at the way the process of teaching, examinations and grading is done and samples examination answer sheets and results-sheets to check for any errors, consistency, checks the syllabus in view of the trends in the subject matter globally and writes a report for improvement.
The external examiner is appointed and may serve up to three consecutive years, after which he/she is changed.
All master’s dissertations and PhD dissertations at Makerere must also be sent to a senior academic outside of Makerere to review and write a report if they are worth the award. The external examiner may give comments to be addressed before the dissertation is considered worthy of the award.
However, Dr Edward Mvavu, the deputy chairperson of Makerere University Academic Staff, said the move would affect the standard of the quality of exams and trainings.
“Suspending external examiners is suicidal. The university should have suspended leadership allowance given to top managers rather than suspending external examiners,” Dr Mvavu said.
“We are not training students for only Makerere, but for the world, so when you have other people from other institutions to come and look at the examination we are setting, they can evaluate and advise on how to improve on the quality of our exams we are giving out to students,” he added.
