Once Upon A time…Students from all over the region craved to study at Makerere University. That was in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s when the institution was regarded as the ‘Harvard’ of Africa.
Among other faculties, the university arguably had the best Medical School in the region. It was also the bastion of academic research and intellectual debates.
It’s slow decline… started in the 1970s when many of the academic staff fled to exile to escape Idi Amin’s misrule. The deterioration in the standards of the university continued unabated in the 1980s due to political instability.
Yet it was in the late 90s when the private scheme was introduced, that Makerere took a turn for the worst. Its facilities could not keep up with the growing number of students and the administrators became money-minded at the expense of offering quality services.
By this point, Makerere retained it’s number one position as the leading institution of higher learning in Uganda but it was ill with little signs of life.
In the 2000s...the university was put on life support. Today, the university administration headed by Prof Barnabas Nawangwe appears determined to snuff out it’s remaining signs of life. Students are suspended for raising complaints about poor food or other services. Student numbers have fallen off the cliff.
Lecturers are policed the same way a director of a secondary school keeps tabs on his teachers. Like a former academic recently said, Makerere is now like an annex of St Mary’s SS, Kitende.
