During the course of the 74th graduation ceremony,in a one-week-long graduation that started on Monday a total of 12,913 graduands receive their degrees and diplomas of Makerere University. Of these, a total of 132 graduands graduate with PhDs, 1585 with Masters degrees, 11,016 with Bachelor’s degrees, 156 with postgraduate diplomas, and 24 with undergraduate diplomas. 53% of the graduands are female and 47% are male. In the category of PhD graduands, 46 are female and 86 are male. In the category of students graduating with Master’s degrees, 699 are female and 886 are male.
While addressing the graduands, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, said the university’s goal is to graduate at least 200 PhDs per year in response to the World Bank’s call for at least 100,000 PhDs for Africa over the next 10 years, to pull the continent out of poverty.
Professor Barnabas Nawangwe, has also asked graduands to pick up their transcripts immediately after graduation.
Nawangwe said that they have long tried to streamline the process for obtaining clearance and ensuring that graduates receive their transcripts on the day of graduation.
By November 2022, the University was stuck with more than 100,000 uncollected transcripts and certificates of students who graduated in recent years, prompting the university management to host a two-week public fair for students to retrieve their documents.
Nawangwe said while they issued 4,650 certificates and 4,113 transcripts, more than 100,000 certificates remain unclaimed, and it is from this background that the Vice Chancellor asked all alumni to come and pick.
In November Makerere University said that it had embarked on plans to ensure that transcripts were ready by the beginning of the 74th graduation ceremony.
Nawangwe pleaded with this year’s graduates to complete the requirements for selecting their transcripts and avoid the University from adding to its already heavy workload.
The University also shortened the criteria for former students to pick up their academic documents after complaints from students about the lengthy procedure to obtain their academic transcripts after graduation, which forced hundreds of students to abandon their transcripts and certificates.
The process was simplified to merely clearing with the finance department and the University Library unlike before when whoever wanted his transcript had to seek clearance from several offices including the dean of students, guild president, college registrar, college bursar, university library, university hospital, Makerere police post, games union, their hall of residence and Bursar.
