Author: ABELA MSIKULA
AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA Commission of Universities (TCU) Chairman, Prof Mayunga Nkunya, has urged universities to stick on quality assurance to produce competent graduates who meet regional and international needs.
Speaking at the closing of a one-week TCU exhibition in Dar es Salaam at the weekend, Prof Nkunya called on all universities to stick on electronic means of admission to facilitate the process and save time. Institutions should also increase learning opportunities to make Tanzania compete with other African countries in admission processes.
He also praised the universities for conducting direct student admission during the exhibition.
According to him, Tanzania is still far behind, recording only 4 per cent of student admission compared to other African countries which range up to 8 per cent.
Giving a word of thanks on behalf of exhibitors during the closing of the exhibition, Director of Global Education Link Abdul Mollel said: “We believe that the presence of competent lecturers means the universities will be able to offer all programmes/courses and increase learning opportunities and expand student admission in the country.”
He said criteria for hiring lecturers should be based on competence and not Grade Point Average (GPA) score education stakeholders recommended in the just ended 15th Universities’ Exhibition in Dar es Salaam.
He said availability of competent lecturers at the universities would result in the expansion of the student admission scope in the country.
Unfortunately, he added, graduates who scored below 3.8 GPA had been regarded as incompetent to be hired by the universities while they were more competent than those who met the criteria.
He stressed that the government and other stakeholders should consider competence-based criteria because competent graduates seemed to have high capacity for creativity and matched the global rapid change of science and technology.
TCU Executive Secretary, Prof Charles Kihampa, urged students to have admission information from TCU’s website to ease the process.
For those who apply for abroad universities should use only 14 registered agents to avoid being cheated.
“We are thankful that there was a huge response from exhibitors as over 65 learning institutions have participated in direct student admission. As of now, 33,939 have already applied,” he said.
