adminA number of candidates were left stranded in May last year, when the Government, through the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education (Zimche), suspended the programmes, citing irregularities in the manner in which the programmes were being handled.
In an interview yesterday, Nust’s registrar Mr Fidelis Mhlanga said the university has satisfied the requirements of Zimche. Zimche is Government’s academic quality control arm.
“The PhD programmes on business administration are running as we speak and the students are back. Significant progress has also been made towards resuming the PhD programme on African Leadership Development,” said Mr Mhlanga.
“The problem was that Zimche was not satisfied with our capacity to run the programme especially the issue of supervisors. They were saying we registered many candidates and therefore felt we did not have enough supervisors.
“By right PhD students should have two supervisors, the main supervisor and the associate supervisor. As it is we have about 30 PhD students doing business administration.”
Mr Mhlanga said each of the 29 departments at Nust had the capacity to run doctorate programmes.
“We are running a lot of PhD programmes at Nust and every department can do that. What is needed is for interested candidates to have a research topic, a proposal that we approve and a supervisor. If there is no supervisor the programme cannot run,” he said.
Nust director of information and public relations Mr Felix Moyo is on record as saying the suspension of the programmes was meant to ensure the degree programmes satisfied the requirements in terms of the law.
He said it was the first time that a taught doctorate degree was being offered in the country, which is why the quality control unit was conducting a check to supervise the procedure and ensure that everything was done accordingly.
When it suspended the programmes last year, the Government made reference to Section 17 of Zimche, which states that:
“If at any time the Council is satisfied that a public institution or higher education has failed to discharge its functions in terms of the enactment . . . Council may recommend to the Ministry to (a) close the institution or (b) repeal the enactment under which the institution was established.”
Online Reporter