Stella Amandru Wawa, the Dean of Students and the Gender Focal Person Muni University, speaking about the low enrolment of female students.

Photo by Godwin Abedican.

By Godwin Abedican

Arua
The leadership of Muni University, the only public University in West Nile is appealing to the parents and stakeholders to embrace and encourage sending girls for science related courses. This comes amidst concerns over the continuous low enrolment of female students to the university, the only public university in the region.

Ever since the university was established under statutory instrument number 31 of 2013 and began operating on 4^th November 2014, the enrolment of female students has been very low compared to their male counterparts.

According to Associate professor, Simon Anguma Katrini, the University’s Vice chancellor, this is down to the negative perception many stakeholders have towards girls or ladies offering sciences right from lower education levels something he says needs to be addressed such that the girl child can also get the determination to do science related courses.

“The enrolment of female students is very low and yet if you go to the national statistics, they are the greater percentage which is a contradiction. Their enrolment at Muni University is low because we are a science oriented University. Most of our programs are science leaning and in secondary schools here in West Nile and across the country, the number of female students offering science combinations is usually lower than the number of students offering Arts combinations and out of the low number when the results come out, those who qualify for university entry are very few. So this translates up to the university,” Ass. Prof. Anguma explained.

However, Stella Amandru Wawa, the Dean of Students and the Gender Focal Person Muni University says, there are a number of efforts being fronted to mitigate this trend much as there are societal challenges that also need to be dealt with.

“All efforts are being put to ensure that the female gender accesses higher education. Affirmative actions like the 1.5 points given has always been in place and there are also a number of partners who are key in supporting girl child education. There are also efforts to ensure that those who never merited to access higher education are given opportunity through the Higher Education certificate (HEC) program. But since, entry in to the university is on merit, you can never bend it low to say that this is a female and since she has zero points she must come, she will definitely struggle to complete,” Amandru said.

Amandru further identifies that, this challenge issue is right from the lower secondary or primary where, in primary section the female gender is bottom heavy but reaching primary seven it is the opposite, with the same thing going up to senior five and six. According to her, societal norms, cultures and perceptions that science is a difficult course also bars many ladies making them not to feel encouraged to take on science courses.

During the graduations ever held by Muni university, in 2017, 77 students graduated with 57 males and 20 females, in 2018 there were 92 graduates in which 69 were males and 23 were female, in 2019, 107 graduated with 90 male and 17 female students, in 2021, there were 103 graduates, 73 males and 30 females and the trend will repeat itself this year as out of 143 students set to graduate on Saturday 6^th April 2024, 99 are males and 44 are females.

With this years’ graduation, a total of 782 graduates will have been produced by Muni University with 578 of them being males and only 204 females, in the 10 years of the university’s existence in the region.