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{
    "id": 137315,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/137315/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 367,
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    "content": "They have also made progress in terms of winning certain awards. I know this year, they won a US$5 million grant on Information and Communication Technnology (ICT). In many ways, the university has been the leader. It is the first public university to be ISO certified. In the last two years, the university has led in performance contracting of all the public institutions. So, it is quite clear that there are certain things that are happening in the institution that are positive. It is important to also appreciate that, even as we are confronted with problems of that kind, of unfortunate incident. In terms of standards of learning and teaching, the university, like any other public university will continue to follow up the expectations in terms of standards maintenance and that relates to both the use of internal examiners, external examiners and quality assurance control mechanisms. It is going to be part of the institutions that are going to be assessed by the Commission for Higher Education (CHE) because there is a Bill that is coming to Parliament - and I hope that Parliament passes that Bill -that is going to recommend that public universities, along with private universities must also be checked in terms of the quality of education that is offered. So the KU is going to be part of that. I would just like to assure you that a lot is happening. Of course, we realize the many constraints in our public universities and KU is no exception; constraints that make quality not what we expect or would like to see. In terms of election of deans, I would like to remind hon. Members that in the process of expanding, new schools have been started at the KU, just like new schools have started in other public universities. Election of deans is only required when you have a critical number of staff members. If you have ten staff members in a university, there is no need to have an election; otherwise, like you have seen with some political parties, everybody will end up being an official of some kind. It is also important that universities get more established academic staff members before they appoint deans. Most of the new faculties that Dr. Khalwale has asked about have young staff members and one or two professors. So, it is important to strengthen them to have more established academic staff members. They should have a person in the form of a dean who will play the important role of being the leader of the whole faculty."
}