On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education held two crisis meetings to resolve the controversy over 133 unapproved university courses.
According to The Standard, the first meeting was chaired by Higher Education Principal Secretary Collette Suda at Jogoo House.
Commission for University Education (CUE) chairperson Chacha Nyaigoti held a second crisis meeting at his office.
It emerged that a communication lapse on the commission's side led to confusion and panic among students and universities.
Details showed that the mother universities did not submit minutes of Senate’s approval of transfer of programmes to the constituent colleges.
“There was a serious problem of slow regularisation of these programmes by Mother University and the constituent colleges,” a senior CUE official mentioned.
In some cases, the constituent colleges – which are still under the mother universities – declared capacities, which were rejected by the commission.
Some vice chancellors alleged that CUE rejected the programmes to punish universities that had failed to remit annual audit and quality assurance fees.
On Monday, CUE released a damning audit of all the degree courses offered by a number of universities in the country.
According to the report, about 10,000 students were enrolled in 133 unapproved courses, which are shallow in scope and not marketable.
This means that the affected students may be forced to discontinue their course studies while those set for graduation will be blocked out of the job market.
The commission faulted the institutions for setting up the students.
