Dar es Salaam. Kampala International University (KIU), Dar es Salaam Constituent College, has reacted strongly against the Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) move to ban it from offering Masters and Doctorate courses.
TCU last week said it would not recognise Masters and Doctorate degrees from KIU because the institution had not met the required criteria.
In an interview soon after the disqualification, the director of Academic Affairs at KIU, Dr Rutaro Abas, said the commission’s decision came too early because the university was still under a two-month interim period it was given by TCU to work on weaknesses before effectively starting to offer fulltime courses for Masters and Doctorate degrees.
“We met earlier with TCU and reached a gentleman’s agreement...now we just wonder why TCU went to the media with the matter,” Dr Abas said.
However, in a quick rejoinder, TCU spokesperson Edward Mkaku turned down KIU’s defence, saying the commission had communicated with the university since July, last year, and directed it to fix the weaknesses but nothing was done.
Mr Mkaku said last July TCU provided a three-month interim period for KIU to sort out the flaws, but since there was no development, the commission added more time which ran up to January this year, but the university did not solve the weaknesses.
“What followed was giving them a three-month ultimatum requiring them to suspend those courses until the institutions abides by the directives,” he said.
After the end of the ultimatum period, now TCU has moved to issue a ban on Masters and Doctorate degree courses at the campus, he said.
Giving details on the matter, Dr Abas said KIU applied for accreditation from the TCU to offer 9 courses for Masters and 5 for Doctorate degrees.
On April 12, this year, TCU wrote to the university in response to the latter’s application, noting that it did not qualify to offer such courses since it lacked enough staff to do so.
Once KIU received the letter of disapproval, according to Dr Abas, the management went to meet TCU for talks in which the two parties reached a ‘gentleman’s agreement.’
