Low female students intake at Malawi University of Science and Technology: ‘We don’t want to become boys only university’

Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) Council Chairperson Dr Andrew Daudi has asked female secondary school students to consider enrolling for science and technology programmes, saying they don’t want to become a boys’ only university.

Currently, the University, which was officially opened in October last year, has 9 percent female enrollment.

Speaking during the University’s open day last Saturday, Daudi said the problem could be the perception that science, engineering and technology programmes are difficult.

“We are very concerned that only few female students opt for MUST programmes. We don’t want to become a boys’ only university,” said Daudi, attracting ulutation from the college’s current male students.

He therefore said they organized the open day to provide information about their science and technology programmes to prospective students.

The open day, held under the theme “establishing a gateway for innovation and entrepreneurship in science and technology”, brought together secondary students from over 50 schools across the country.

“We think, through this, students will be motivated and inspired to apply for our programmes. Again, by allowing the prospective students to visit our beautiful campus, we believe we will whet their appetite to come and join us even more,” said Daudi.

He said MUST was mainly established to encourage the advancement of knowledge and its dissemination, commercialization of research products and to promote industrial growth through research and dissemination of knowledge.

The University opened its doors to its pioneer students in March 2015 with around 150 students in engineering programmes.

“These students are now in their second semester of their second year. In order to create a culture of research and outreach, in our first year we also introduced two postgraduate programmes at Masters level in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

“In our second intake, we have enrolled 302 students in the three initial engineering programmes. We have also added two new undergraduate programmes in Earth Sciences and Meteorology and Climate Science,” said Dausi, adding that they will introduce two more programmes next year.

He said they want to offer programmes that will add value to national development and respond to the needs of the industry and the nation in general.

On his part Education, Science and Technology Minister, Dr Emmanuel Fabiano equally encouraged secondary school students patronized the open day to seriously consider enrolling in science and technology degree programmes.

“MUST can choose to increase the number of scientists but if there are no youths out there opting to study science, engineering and technology this may end up as a mere dream.

“I have heard that female enrollment in this university is very low. That is worrying. As a country we need to increase the number of both male and female youths engaged in science, engineering and technology activities,” said Fabiano.

MUST has the capacity to enroll 5000 students