TCU closes another SUIT college.

The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU).

The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) has caught the first prey of its nationwide quality assurance net, driving St Joseph University in Tanzania (SJUIT) into death bed in less than a fortnight.

 

It closed the Arusha Campus yesterday as the university’s third constituent college in what appeared to be the start of a crackdown on poor varsity performers as of last week. 

 

The embattled university has now only two premises in store, namely Boko Campus in Dar es Salaam and the Main Campus in Luguruni at Kibamba in the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, that are nevertheless seemed to have been booked by the chief academic regulators, pending release of performance report “before the start of the second semester” in April, said TCU Executive Secretary Pofessor Yunis Mgaya  yesterday.

 

Last week TCU axed two SJUIT constituent colleges namely that of Agricultural Science and that of Information,  both in Ruvuma Region for failure to meet the quality assurance standards. 

 

Though the professor was short of specifying who would be next after St Joseph, he said; “We have discovered that some universities are not serious in implementing the guidelines provided by the commission, therefore this is the big exercise which will identify all universities going against the key guidelines.”

 

Implying the start of the nationwide exercise, Prof. Mgaya also said; “The exercise is not intended at closing universities, but at awakening them into proper implementation of their duties and challenging them into delivering quality university education.” 

 

He said since the commission had been routinely but in vain providing guidelines to be followed by each university in order to ensure they delivered quality education, all violating universities would be uncompromisingly taken to task to protect the innocent students who are taken victims of circumstances.

 

Citing SJUIT as a case in point, the TCU chief said there had been persistent and recurring students’ unrests especially at its Arusha Campus protesting against quality assurance and poor governance management, but the university turned a deaf ear to TCU’s repeated pleas to address the ills.

 

At its closure yesterday, a total of 1,557 continuing students at the Arusha Campus were pursuing 12 Bachelor of Science with Education disciplines, but together with 500 others who were suspended last year for mounting protests would be relocated to other universities following the same disciplines.

 

New admissions into the integrated 5-year Programme were apparently stopped with due effect yesterday. 

 

 The SJUIT-Arusha campus was estabvlished in 2013 for the first intake of students to be admitted in the 2013/14 academic year.

 

According to TCU, all students are supposed to immediately vacate the university campus upon completion of the set clearance procedures and to report to the receiving institutions upon the opening of the second semester scheduled for April.w