Universities Should Be Free to Share Staff (EAC)

Universities Should Be Free to Share Staff (EAC)

Today within the East African Community (EAC), it is normal to find a professor working at more than two universities in a bid to supplement the meagre salary at the mother university. Gone are the days when we used to have three universities in East Africa - Makerere University, University of Nairobi and University of Dar es Salaam.

Over the years, the universities have grown to over 200 within the EAC, with Kenya alone boasting of over 70. The increase has not led to an increase in the number of staff with PhDs, the minimum requirement in most world-class universities for anyone to be appointed as a lecturer. Again the salaries for academic staff in universities across EAC are at their lowest ever, with Uganda leading in terms of low pay for academic staff.

Kenya universities, on average, still pay better than the rest in EAC. As a result of low pay and lack of sufficient qualified staff, it is normal to find staff crossing borders to provide academic support, including teaching, for extra pay. Some staff, especially in the health-related disciplines, travel as far as South Africa on a weekly basis to provide services in hospitals in addition to undertaking academic responsibilities at their home institutions.

Academic staff in the law schools own prominent chambers through which they offer legal services in addition to teaching at universities. It is common to find a professor of Medicine owning a clinic or hospital, or being attached to more than two private clinics/ hospitals all in the name of providing critical services and earning extra income.

In the business, ICT and engineering disciplines, the norm is to set up consultancy firms. Yours truly has been a chairman and managing director of a reputable ICT consultancy firm since 2001, while working at Makerere University and now at Uganda Technology and Management University (UTAMU).

Most of the staff in the social sciences, agricultural sciences, veterinary sciences and health sciences are always in the field undertaking research and projects, from which they earn some extra income too. They spend less time in offices at the universities. Modern universities have moved away from the traditional classroom teaching to case-study form of training, which requires staff to be in the field practising what they teach.

This is in anticipation that they will preach to the students what they practise. I can't imagine a staff member teaching entrepreneurship when he/she has never been an entrepreneur! Within the country, like in the case of Uganda, most universities have campuses in Kampala or its neighbourhood.

The reason is simple: Kampala has the highest concentration of PhD holders in the country. As a result, it is normal to have staff teaching in more than three institutions of higher education. This has been on since 1988, when the Islamic University In Uganda (IUIU) started and staff at Makerere University would travel all the way to Mbale to undertake part-time teaching.

Over the years, the working schedule for academic staff of most universities, if not all, has shifted from 8am to 5pm (Monday to Friday) to cover all the days and time of the week. It is not unusual to find staff in class at 6am in the morning and beyond 5pm, Sunday to Sunday. In addition, lecturers no longer have good offices and where they exist, they are shared.

So, most of them prefer to work from home especially when they are not teaching or when they do not have appointments with students they supervise. Working at home is a culture that caught up in the developed world long ago and is slowly taking root in Africa including Uganda. Advancements in technology have further propelled working from home since social collaborations can now be made ubiquitously (from anywhere, at any time and the person's wish).

Looking at the prevailing conditions and circumstances, most universities in the region have focused more on the outputs/ outcomes than measuring how much time one spends in office. So, they have come up with what is called full-time staff load that includes hours of teaching, hours of research, hours of interacting with /supervising students, hours of community engagement per week, as a measure of full-time equivalent.

In our education institutions, most staff work for an average of 14 hours a day for seven days a week. Normally the academic work at the mother institution is spread over the seven days of the week. It is normal to find staff teaching over the weekend or very early in the morning and late in the evening. It is normal to find staff holding supervision meetings with their graduate students over the weekend or late in the evening or very early in the morning.

As a result, after taking on the full-time load at the mother institution, the academic staff seek opportunities elsewhere. Most universities are willing to share staff as long as the full-time workload at the mother institution is abided by. Before the government puts a lot of money into PhD training, like it is being done in South Africa, a university in Uganda that wants to tie its academic staff in its offices from 8am to 5pm (Monday through Friday) will not only lose them but will also end up providing poor services to the students.

It is common knowledge that the best staff are the ones that end up getting offers across the universities. It is better to share them than not to have them at all. Most of the academic staff at public universities, with the exception of those heavily involved in research, end up working at other institutions, especially private universities.

Research done by the Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA), some time back showed that the private universities pay better than public universities. As a result, it is obvious if such high-quality PhD holders are asked to choose between two universities, they would choose the one with better pay, better benefits and better job security.

From my experience at Makerere University as director, dean and vice chancellor, universities take decisions in regard to academic staff with far-reaching consequences without ever thinking of what would happen to the students being supervised and taught. In the end, the students are always the losers. There is this false perception that when academic staff are in their university offices, they are doing university work. Most of us in academia know that this is not necessarily true.