The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) will this week dish out degrees to graduates, who hardly attended lectures during their last semester at the country’s oldest institution of higher learning with lecturers warning of a scandal they say will eclipse former first lady Grace Mugabe’s PHD degree disgrace The shocking revelations are contained in an urgent chamber application at the High Court in Harare filed by the Association of University Teachers Association (AUT) seeking to stop Friday’s graduation ceremony UZ lecturers went on strike at the beginning of the final semester for those who will be conferred with degrees at the ceremony to be presided over by President Emmerson Mnangagwa The lecturers said they want the courts to prevent UZ authorities from conferring ‘bogus’ degrees based on compromised academic processes in contravention of UZ Act provisions
On August 6, university authorities issued a notice indicating that the graduation ceremony would be held on August 15 In a shocking development, the Council of Social Workers is already investigating serious allegations that students, who were doing a post graduate diploma in social work wrote examinations for a module, which they were never taught “The Council of Social Workers has noted with concern the serious allegations surrounding the University of Zimbabwe’s post graduate diploma in social work’s working community health course,” the council wrote in a notice to all social workers and stakeholders on July 25 In his explosive founding affidavit, AUT president Phillemon Chamburuka claimed that in the faculty of law there was an unprecedented number of distinctions despite the fact that students attended lectures that were below the prescribed minimum threshold
“Communication in the faculty of law shows that 60% of students in the international, economic and investment module received distinctions after being taught for two weeks by an inexperienced lecturer,” Chambaruka wrote “In the student and life skills law course, students had a single lecturer, yet 233 of the 469 students got distinctions Both these are abnormal and unprecedented results.”
Communication from the Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu) filed as part of the evidence in court showed that final social work students were asked to sit for a French examination despite the fact that they were never taught the module The examination period was also allegedly marred by the delayed release of results, and students writing examinations without undergoing three weeks of learning “of a minimum 150 hours per module.”
“In some instances no learning took place at all due to unavailability of lecturers yet students were scoring outstanding marks,” AUT said in one of the correspondences with the university’s administration
Chambaruka argued that allowing the graduation ceremony to go ahead would be a travesty of justice “This premature scheduling not only places undue financial pressure on students, but also undermines their ability to participate meaningfully in the graduation ceremony because they have not completed their studies Source: The Standard Zimbabwe
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Source: Thestandard
