| About 50 students who failed the two-year Diploma in Local Development in July drew up a petition in which they demanded to be given an automatic pass and that Professor Piet van Rooyen be removed as course lecturer.Van Rooyen was subsequently brought before a disciplinary hearing at which the Dean of the faculty, Dr Boniface Mutumba, allegedly twice demanded that Van Rooyen let these students pass or hand in his resignation.The meeting was attended by Unam Vice Chancellor Dr Osmund Mwandemele, Registrar Alois Fledersbacher, Head of Examinations John Ockhuizen, Mutumba and Head of Department Dr Tapera Chiwaru.
PRECEDENT? However, Mutumba denied that he had asked for Van Rooyen’s resignation or that the meeting amounted to a disciplinary hearing.
“We were just meeting as colleagues, but it was not a disciplinary hearing… the matter was resolved,” he said.
What was resolved was a decision to allow all the failed students to repeat the course, free of charge - raising questions about the legal precedent this decision could create, other academics and students said.
The two-year diploma course was designed to allow students who did not achieve high enough marks at school - 25 points on the ICGSCE grading - to enter university.
Successful completion of this course would allow them to enrol for further studies at Unam - seemingly the main reason why most of the students enrolled, students said.
Van Rooyen declined to discuss the issue, but agreed to allow a reporter to attend a lecture on Wednesday, in which he outlined to the students why they had failed his course.
It was a lesson not much appreciated by those who had failed, judging by complaints from the back rows.
WHYS AND WHEREFORES Van Rooyen told the students that while there were 148 students enrolled, only eight copies of the prescribed textbook had been sold by the campus bookshop in the past semester.
Class attendance the past semester was also very poor, with only 40 students on average attending lectures in spite of a Unam regulation that they have to attend at least 80 per cent of classes in order to sit for examinations, he noted.
Further, their ability to communicate in English was poor - but not one of the students had a dictionary with them, and even the better students asked for explanations of words such as “locality”.
Assignments handed in often were of very poor standard, both in presentation and terms of language, with some students unable to distinguish between words like “policy” and “police”, he said.
While Van Rooyen admitted freely that his Afrikaans-accented English was perhaps hard to understand at times, students had the right to ask him to explain or ask for help, he said.
However, as a senior academic, he had responsibilities to make sure that students meet minimum standards, as he refused to hand out “phoney” qualifications, Van Rooyen told the class.
WHAT ABOUT US? The rowdy group of first years generally welcomed news of the appointment of a new, more junior lecturer.
While efforts were made to speak to students who had failed, only those who passed the first module were generally willing to be interviewed.
Asked why so many students had failed, top student Aino Mundilo suggested that these students “preferred their independence” to enjoy student life away from the strictures of parental control.
The main reason was because they failed to attend lectures - and then as a result could not understand the prescribed textbook, she said.
“But if I fail one of the next modules, will I also be allowed to repeat the course free of charge?” Mundilo asked.
Too many of the failed students merely took the course because it allowed them to say they were studying at Unam, others felt.
“The biggest problem is that many of them, especially those who come from schools in the North, have real difficulty in expressing themselves in English,” said Sibongile Tshabalala.
Another Unam academic said the problem was exacerbated by a political decision by Unam’s senior management to force their most senior staff to teach undergraduates.
This meant that some lecturers were shouldering massive workloads while neglecting essential research and publication, the measure by which universities worldwide are judged.
An obvious problem was motivation: senior lecturers such as Van Rooyen earn salaries less than half the generous packages that Unam’s administrators have given themselves, it was established.
By stressing access to higher education rather than quality of higher education, Unam management has “diminished the very currency of education” and this held very serious implications for Namibia’s future development, one academic said.
While Unam has spent N$4 million on modern teaching aids such as computerised touch-screens over the past year, its students appeared unappreciative.
After the class had left, the room was left filled with litter from food and junk left behind in spite of clear signs that say: ‘No eating in class allowed’. |
Stumble it!