UB and UBa can take care of themselves - Fame Ndongo

In what looks like a subtle surrender to harmonise academic programmes in all state universities and rid the country of its two education systems, the Minister of Higher Education has stated that the harmonisation of state universities would now be carried out in respect of the specificities of the Anglophone system of education.

Jacques Fame Ndongo explained during a meeting with officials of all state universities that harmonization does not mean standardization or making university programmes uniform. He reportedly held that the harmonisation plan is about the putting in place of common basis for the comparability of university curricula and diplomas to facilitate the academic mobility of students and teachers.

Going by a release from the Ministry Of Higher Education, at the end of the May 30 meeting in Yaounde which focused on the harmonization of university curricula in classical faculties of state universities, a handful of resolutions were made.

According to the resolutions, the specificities of the Anglophone system of education will have to be respected as prescribed by the law. “The universities of Buea and Bamenda will, therefore, harmonize their curricula among themselves without necessarily conforming to the francophone model” the release reads in part.

Each university will write out its curricula using the referential frame built up in the workshops organised during the experts meeting, and will have the curricula validated by the various university senates; and the validated curricula will be transmitted to the Ministry of Higher Education for approval and eventual accreditation by the competent accrediting bodies, as per the resolutions of the experts meeting held on the campus of the University of Yaounde I.

It should however be recalled that Ndongo had during the opening of the meeting on May 30, reiterated the fact that rules and regulations of decree N°2012/433 of 1stOctober 2012, organizing the ministry of higher education, in its article 29, gives him the right to ensure the harmonization of university curricula.

He maintained that the expert group meetings have as task to ensure the coherence of the entire system while at the same time respecting the specificities inherent to each University within the framework of their academic autonomy.

The expert group includes rectors of the universities of Yaoundé I and II, heads of department of faculties of law and political sciences, economic and management sciences and arts, letters and social sciences, of all the eight state universities.

It should be noted that the minister’s release might have been prompted by protests by Anglophone teachers associations and other grouping including the University of Buea chapter of the National Syndicate of Teachers of Higher Education, SYNES, the Union of Parent Teachers Association of Cameroon, UPTA, the Cameroon Teachers’ Trade Union, CATTU, and Common Law lawyers who had issued a strongly worded objection to the harmonisation project.

This, they said, was because they figured out in the plan, a hidden agenda to annihilate the Anglo-Saxon system of education in the country.

Higher education institutions of medicine, pharmacy and dental surgery are already implementing a harmonised programme which government presented as a step toward guaranteeing improved training in both private and government-run health training institutions.