Makerere to reduce student intake by 5000

The university will mostly slash undergraduate students pursuing diplomas or first degrees in humanities while slots for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEP) courses will remain untouched.

These changes come at time Senate is set to sit tis coming Thursday, March 16 2023. Senate is expected to approve the new changes on this day.

The changes, according to Prof Nawangwe, reflect the transformation of Makerere, Uganda’s oldest public university, into a research institution.

“There are programmes which we can’t reduce because the numbers are still low, especially STEM. But in the humanities, we are definitely going to start reducing,” he said.

“The reduction will be done until we get the optimum number. If we reach the total enrolment of undergraduate students at 20,000, then we shall stop there and see [where] the number of graduates has reached.”

Makerere currently has 35,256 students, with those studying arts outnumbering science counterparts by about 5,000, according to university records.

Overall, Makerere University has been admitting 13,000 undergraduate students annually.

With Makerere placed Uganda’s best and 13th top in Africa in the latest Webometrics ranking, Nawangwe said the student number reduction plan means the institution will raise the admission cut-off points.

He said: “We will use the same criteria. If we get the number of students admitted per programme, we shall have those and we cut off the rest. The criteria will not change just that our cut-off points will go high.”