Unima delinking approved by Parliament: Poly will now be Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences
Legislations during the last session of Parliament before elections passed three Bills on the de-linking of the University of Malawi.
The Malawi Polytechnic will now be called Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences while College of Medicine and Kamuzu College of Nursing have been combined and will now be called Malawi University of Health Sciences.
Chancellor College will be University of Malawi.
Education activists have been advocating for the restructuring of Unima describing it as significant in enhancing educational growth among them high standards of academic leadership, financial independence, strong and world-class research as well as world-class academia.
The Unima council endorsed the delinking of College of Medicine, Kamuzu College of Nursing and The Polytechnic from Unima.
The move followed a nod President Peter Mutharika who is Unima chancellor, gave the council for the Unima delinking to begin.
During the sitting of Parliament, an attempt by opposition MPs to amend the Bills and take away powers of the President from being Chancellor of the University of Malawi was defeated.
The delinking of the three colleges is the second after Bunda College of Agriculture was delinked from the university in 2011 which merged with Natural Resources College to form Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar).
Parliament came to an end on Friday after a two-week Mid-Year Budget Review meeting.
The President is expected to dissolve Parliament on March 20, according to the Republican Constitution.
Poly should be joined with malawi college of accountancy.; and soche technical college with Lilongwe technichal college.
So, “Poly” will from now be known as “MUBA” or MUBAs”. Sarcasm abound.
Viz – Sopano mwanaakha wa mu th’iyana will be going to “MUBA” olo “MUBAs) for Engineering: osati azikaphunzila zokuba apa.
The president does not dissolve parliament in Malawi. Parliament stand dissolved on 20th March every 5 years after elections. If you are a DPP diehard ( the writer of this article), please don’t mislead Malawians that there will be a presidential function of dissolving parliament. Parliament will dissolve own it’s own by application of law.
This is purely diluting university / tertiary education. The best could have been to build new Universities like what the late Prof. Bingu did with Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST). He really very Innovative. Unima should have been like that but come up with other New Universities.
Good move! Just leaving it there will however be detrimental to the tertiary education system. Government as well as the institution should come in so fast to to ensure that these universities rise to standards by among other things planning for and providing the most needed infrastructure (accommodation, classrooms, IT etc) as well as providing environment for competetion within and between these institutions. Believe me well calculated investment in tertiary education is paramount to sustainable development (musandifunse za Tcheya apa). I want to see Poly growing vertically! I want to see tertiary institutions whose research are benefiting the country! I… Read more »
What is “Poly”?
A Malawi, tisankhe munthu wina a yendetse dzikoli. Peter Mutharika sangatithandize. Munthu uyu wakhala ku America zaka zaka. Koma sanaonepo President kapenda Governor ali Chancellor wa university. Parliament imasankha anthu a mu Board of Regents amene ama yang’ana za fees ndi mmene university zikuyendera. University iliyonse ili ndi Chancellor kapena kuti President amene amakhala pa university pompo. Koma chomwe Mutharika akukakamirira kuti a khale Chancellor wa university ndi chani?
Why does Malawi have this penchant for long names? Our ministries have some of the longest names in the world. I long for the days when we simply had ” Ministry of Health” rather than ” Ministry of Health and Population Services” – or whatever it is called these days. [or Ministry of Education rather than Ministry of Education, Science and Technology!] As for Poly, most alumni were expecting that it would simply be called Chichiri University. As it stands now will this University of Business and Applied Sciences be changing its name whenever it adds a faculty that is… Read more »
Thank you for opening up on the naming. For your information The Ministry of Health stoped many years ago being called “Ministry of Health and Population”. It is just Ministry of Health (MOH) basi. I wonder the Ministry itself through its spokesperson does not make this correction. Yes we know that although the Ministry is just MOH, the Parliament has a committee which still attaches population to its name, thus “Health and Population” This is just the parliamentary committee but the Ministry is just MOH.Can the Ministry come out and make this clear to the general public, the media and… Read more »
what we want is nothing else let alone the worldly recognised papers
So these are the universities APM promised?
So, does it mean APM will continue to be the Chancellor of the tiny Universities? A full university having only three faculties- what shame. This is reducing teretiary education to secondary school level. May university including world class universities have colleges within the shier system and what was wrong for UNIMA to have colleges such as Poly, Chanco, Bunda College of Medicine and KCN? Political interference has messed our our education system.
Which among the three colleges has 3 faculties? KCN and COM together have 8 and good enough to form a University.
I disagree with you Kapado. These are not tiny universities per se. For instance, Chanco has five faculties, namely, Education. Humanities, Social sciences, Sciences and Law, these on their own can operate as full blown-universities. Under one Unima all these schools were heavily limited to grow. Look at what happened to Bunda. It used to have 1,000 students but today Bunada now called Luana, has 10,000 students .Delinking of the university is a welcome move and many students will be enrolled in these new universities.
You only think of APM, is the change for APM to benefit? What is he lose the elections will the Universities to be linked again? I think people, I mean well educated like you consulted and came up with this recommendations?
They probably think they will be manageable once delinked or they will happy politically as they will have so many universities.