UNIMA’s Chancellor College campus in Zomba
* The current intake of students does not match with the demand for higher education
* This also demands expanding UNIMA’s infrastructural and technical development
* We are also looking forward to seeing improvements in our research work and remain competitive
By Solister Mogha, MANA
Newly-appointed University of Malawi (UNINA) Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Samson Sajidu said they are planning to increase its enrolment from the current 8,000 to 15,000 students by 2026.
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He said this on Wednesday during the graduation of 1,444 students from its three former constituent colleges — Kamuzu College of Nursing, the Polytechnic, the College of Medicine and Chancellor College.
Sajidu said the current intake of students does not match with the demand for higher education, noting that the only solution to this problem was to increase the intake while also expanding its infrastructural and technical development.
Prof. Sajidu
“According to our strategic plan, we have a number of things to achieve by 2026 — some of which is to improve the university’s visibility internationally, improve our infrastructural development by constructing more classes as well as hostels,” he said.
“We are also looking forward to seeing improvements in our research work and remain competitive.”
He said UNIMA’s role was to produce highly qualified professionals who would directly contribute to acceleration of the country’s socio-economic development.
The aspirations could be achieved if the University has all the necessary requirements and a conducive teaching and learning environment.
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Chairperson of UNIMA Council, George Partridge challenged the University to look for other means of increasing its financial base other than relying on subvention from government.
He said a university must always strive to grow and that such growth could only be attained if there are multiple sources of income.
The graduands
“The University must increase its intake to meet the daily increasing demand. In addition, there must be numerous ways of delivering education with some studies being delivered online,” said Partridge, while advising the graduands to be agents of change and help the country achieve its MW2063 aspirations.
Out of the total 1,444 graduating students, 10 were awarded certificates, 43 diplomas, 1,235 bachelors and postgraduate diplomas, 134 masters with eight attaining doctorate degrees.
Soon after his appointment last month, Sajidu observed that despite its long history of having highly educated many Malawians since the 1960s who became elite professionals — contributing to the social and economic development of this country — the UNIMA is not rated among the top best higher institute of learning in Africa.
He had said, among others, the UNIMA changes include lack of research; teaching & outreach; lack of acknowledgement of its scholars’ research contributions and publications in some international major publications.
Some other challenges include limited research capacity; inadequate funding; lack of both local and international visibility; low access to higher education by most deserving Malawian youths; limited ICT capacity and rigid mindset and conflict escalations.
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He had outlined these challenges when asked what were his plans going forward upon being appointed to lead the University that has had other nine highly-decorated at the same helm.
Sajidu acknowledged that these are challenges that UNIMA’s Vision seeks to sustainably address, which include strategies or plans that are in place aimed at increasing student enrollment in both its face-to-face and open distance e-learning (ODeL) programmes and enhancing resource mobilization and financial sustainability.
The Vision also seeks at improving students’ success during their studies and strengthening their employability skills as well as developing and implementing an ambitious research strategy.
The research strategy is to enhance UNIMA’s research capacity — its visibility, and impact; strengthening its outreach and engagement activities and improving its ICT capacity for enhanced efficiency in saving costs.
The ICT capacity is to make “use of data for seamless decision making; developing and integrating internationalisation in our mandates; reducing conflict escalations; and implementing a robust performance management system for mindset change”.—Additional reporting by Duncan Mlanjira
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