07 Mar 2017

Botho University Gaborone campus has closed indefinitely on March 6, after students gathered around the school circle and caused a smoke of fire.

The External Relations dean Mr Golekanye Setume told BOPA in an interview that the school has closed pending investigations on the matter.
“We closed the school after lunch on March 6. Around lunch hour a small number of students of about 10-20 sat around the circle in the school. After that we saw a smoke of fire. When students make fires around the school it now becomes a criminal activity, In Francistown we have since closed,” he said.
In an interview Botho University Student Representative Council (SRC) vice president Mr Oarabile Setime said the students were protesting against new set of rules and regulations that the school effected on Saturday. 

“Amongst many others the school regulations bar the students from lingering around or using the court yards. On top of the issue of unaccredited courses they have now introduced tough regulations for students which are unfair to us and they may hinder us from showing our grieviences,” he decried. 
Notice written by management to Botho students stated that,“ due to the unfortunate incidence and unrest that has prevailed over the past few weeks it has become necessary to adopt additional rules and regulations in order to improve the safety and security.”
The regulations that were communicated to the students show that extra-curricular activities were suspended, no loitering around the school was allowed, all students must identity themselves at the university entrance, the university courtyard was closed until further notice, any actions that disrupt classes were strictly forbidden amongst many others. 

Last week Thursday Botho University management convened a press conference over the unrest that was going on at the university. Speaking during the conference, vice chancellor Ms Sheela Raja Ram said despite many attempts made to engage the SRC on the Book levy and course accreditation at the institution, the SRC has nonetheless decided to take an unreasonable stance.

She told members of the press on Thursday evening that the new development from Ministry of Tertiary Education Research Science and Technology required all tertiary institutions to accredit courses including public institutions. Thus in line with following the enactment of the new regulations that effected in January Botho University submitted 54 courses for accreditation.

The press conference came after a spate of students’ protests against enrolment in programmes which were not accredited by the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) which they said compromised their qualifications and their future.
The vice chancellor disclosed that so far no program that was offered by Botho University had been rejected by the BQA rather they have all been approved but are awaiting accreditation. She said the process will take about six months and they are eagerly awaiting the BQA verdict.  
“We really appreciate that students are concerned and its fully justifiable that students are concerned about the recognition of their courses, BQA has communicated with students to explain what this means to them,” she stated.

“We at Botho University take our regulatory obligations extremely seriously. We were the first to be registered with Tertiary Education Council (TEC) and we have always been compliant and we have submitted all our programmes for accreditation for the regulations of BQA. We are currently waiting for the BQA to complete the process," she said.
Ms Raja Ram said the institution has been around for the past 20 years and it has invested in quality infrastructure, human resource development and strives to produce quality graduates who have a global thinking outlook. Thus the institution’s internal quality assurance is robust where feedback is taken from every student, every semester to be synthesized.

“We find where quality issues are at grass roots level and we fix them and go back to students and tell them what we have done about them. We are ISO certified and this is rare,” she said.
She added that it was unfortunate that despite extensive consultations with the student body they decided to protest without fully appreciating what was on the table.  Thus, she said it was pertinent for the students to understand the accreditation process,

“Accreditation is a rigorous process and time consuming. Between the institution and BQA we have made the students understand the legal and regulatory process that our programmes are going through but the students have taken an unreasonable stance on this and they have decided to disrupt classes, its unfortunate that there has been violence on campus,” she noted.

For his part , Mr Setume explained that the “process of programme recognition is a two part continuous process which starts with approval of a programme and only then can a programme start being offered, no qualification can be run without approval. The students will have a qualification recognised by the regulator,” he said.
Further he said for a programme to be approved it means that the institution would have met the minimum requirements as set out by the regulator, “before an institution runs a programme, a document is submitted to the regulator and the Law stipulates that the programme should enroll learners and run for at least 12 months, the regulatory authority will go through documentation and do audit visits to examine the correlation between what was submitted and what was happening on the ground,” he said.

The SRC president Mr Dikatlholo said he had been in the SRC since 2014 thus despite the new BQA regulation, the issue of accreditation emanates from far back as they have held a series of meetings with the school management.
He said there was growing fear of unemployment amongst students as they may not be able to compete in the job market holding unaccredited subjects. He said there were some students who have since graduated who have decided to settle for lowly paying jobs for the reason that they took unaccredited courses which did not give them a competitive edge.

“The reason that we decided to protest after so many years is that some of the programmes are not up to scratch, Forensics, Multimedia, and Jewelry Management students do not have laboratories,” he said.
Further he said the protests were sparked by lack of transparency on the part of the school. “When we requested to know which courses were accredited and which were not we were told that it is confidential information,” he said.

However during the press briefing Vice Chancellor Raja Ram said that when the BQA accreditation process completes in the coming six (6) months all information will be availed to students and on the BQA Website.
She said in the event a programme was not accredited, BQA has a process which it uses to handle cases “students may be given another programme or be transferred to another tertiary institution,” she said. ends