Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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campus based consultancy services; establishment of commercial units and
curriculum development. Decentralization following the admission of feepaying
private students enabled faculties to innovate with curricula, new
degrees and to pay incentives to teaching staff through a kind of profit
sharing formula adopted by the University as a whole. Thus, the faculties
that recruited private fee paying students were allowed to retain most of
this earned income. One new way of attracting a larger number of feepaying
students was the arrangement of night-courses.
These developments have resulted in increased revenues as the number
of fee-paying students increased; construction of new buildings, as well as
maintenance of old infrastructure; payment of salary ‘top-ups’ to many teachers
allowing them to devote their time to academics; and improved communication
and teaching aids. These innovations and commensurate revenues
have also raised the hope of improved funding for research and services
as well as some increases in salaries and other fringe benefits for the
staff on a systemic basis rather than as an ad hoc arrangement. As entrepreneurial
initiatives became rewarded, the campus gradually came alive again.
We can conclude that economic necessity stimulated innovation, which
generated income for the more popular faculties. However, the fruits of this
growth in student enrolment have not been equally distributed – some
faculties, such as sciences, have been left behind just as impoverished as
before. These islands of underdevelopment on the campus pose a challenge
to the planning and management of Makerere University as a whole. The
future of the science subjects as well as the overall quality of education was
the main worry. Administrative and management systems were strained to
breaking point by an increased work load without any changes to the systems
themselves in terms of computerization and modernization, resulting
in inefficiencies and bureaucratic delays.
Development of the grant application–innovation begins
The dramatic transformations in Uganda during the early 1990s, created a
vacuum in human resources, especially regarding appropriately trained and
educated personnel in the areas of policy, management and service delivery.
The Government of Uganda together with donors, such as the World Bank
and DANIDA developed training programmes to meet urgent short-term
needs. These short-term training courses were developed mainly by outside
institutions and were both expensive and foreign, although they had the
capacity to deliver results. An alternative was soon developed. The basic
idea was that Makerere University would have a better chance of developing
and delivering a sustainable appropriate training and educational programme
to meet the changing demands for human resources. Therefore, the
Government of Uganda appealed to Makerere University to play a more