KAMPALA, UGANDA: Uganda’s oldest academic institution; Makerere University says it is stuck with a total of 121,393 uncollected transcripts and certificates. Of the 121,393, 118,695 are certificates, while 2,698 are transcripts.
Prof Umar Kakumba, the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs says Makerere University has run out of space to keep the unclaimed documents that it intends to put on display to allow the owners to pick them.
“We import materials to make these transcripts and certificates expensively. It does not make sense if the owners do not pick them,” Prof Kakumba said during on Thursday at the University Senate offices in Kampala.
According to Prof Kakumba, a total of 88,032 certificates belong to students who graduated from Makerere University between 1954 and 2016 while another 6,655 certificates belong to the cohort of 2017, 9,046 are for the group that graduated in 2018.
Additionally, 9,995 certificates are for those who graduated in 2019 and 4,957 belong to those who graduated in 2020. Of the 2,698 uncollected transcripts, 1,348 are for those who graduated in 2021 while 1,350 are for those who graduated in 2020.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source familiar with business at the top institution offices revealed that the university is working on a policy that will impose a surcharge fee on the owners of the academic documents who delay picking them.
“The policy has not yet been finalised but it will require students to pay a fine if they take more than two years without picking them,” the source said. The source added that many certificates remain unclaimed because the university issues only one certificate in a lifetime, so the owners want the university to keep their papers safe.
“Many students prefer keeping their certificates with us because they are safe. The university policy calls for printing of a certificate once in a lifetime. Transcripts can be printed many times,” the source said.
However, Prof Kakumba says some students usually get employed using testimonials (results uploaded before one graduates) and are confirmed at their places of work, hence they become reluctant to pick their substantive documents.
Against this background, the university has therefore organised a two-week public fair to exhibit and issue the uncollected documents to the owners and the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, in a circular dated October 11 directed all the college registrars to print and issue any backlog cohort of transcripts and certificates.
“During this two-week public fair, all pending transcripts and certificates must be printed and issued to their owners,” Prof Nawangwe said.
The exhibition begins on November 5. Students are required to obtain clearance from a number of offices such as that of the academic registrar, library, university hospital, university bursar and halls of residence before picking up their documents.
According to Wikipedia, a degree certificate is a document that specifies which degree programme the student has graduated in while a transcript lists the course units, the exams attempted, as well as grades the student acquired in that particular course.
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