OUT seeks alumni views to improve curricular
THE Open University of Tanzania (OUT) has embarked on an exercise to reach out to its graduates countrywide, to get their feedbacks on quality of education they obtained from it so as to improve its curricular.
According to OUT’s Vice-Chancellor Prof Elifas Bisanda the move is meant to evaluate education offered by the university, the results which would help in improving its curricular in line with current demands.
Since its established in 1992 the university has pumped into the job market over 50,000 graduates.
“We want to reach out to graduates out there so that they tell us gaps in education we have offered them, if any. Also, they tell us where should we improve so that the future graduates could fit in the job market and contribute to country’s economic growth,” Prof Bisanda stated on Tuesday at a press conference.
The university believes that the evaluation is important in getting rid of ‘business as usual’ operations, he said, adding: “We must change.”
Questions to graduates include how courses they had studied help them, and whether there are gaps to be addressed to make such courses more useful or stop offering them.
The exercise will further extend to employers who would also be asked to give their feedback on how they see graduates from the OUT and what should be improved to enable it produce well-cooked graduates for competitive job market.
“We need to produce people with job skills. Those who can employ themselves and create jobs for others,” he argued.
The evaluation comes after the World Bank (WB) through the Higher Education for Economic Transformation project (HEET) issued a loan to the university to improve quality of education.
HEET project aims to strengthen the learning environment, ensure greater alignment of priority degree programs to labour market needs, and improve the management of the higher education system.
Prof Bisanda added that the aim of education is to help an ordinary citizen to effectively use the national resources and contribute to national as well as improve individual income.
