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Universities challenged to add life skills to academics for students
As 35 students receive Cavendish scholarships
Cavendish University Vice Chancellor Prof. John Mugisha handing out a scholarship to one of the student
Universities and all institutions of higher learning have been challenged to go beyond imparting academic knowledge, and include life skills for the success of their students and the wider community.
The call was made by Cavendish University Uganda Vice Chancellor Professor John Mugisha while officiating at the award of 35 scholarships by the university recently.
Professor Mugisha said that whereas the quality observance and academic excellence is high on the University’s agenda, other co-curricular activities are equally important for total transformation of the student so that at the end of their courses they can lead their respective countries to progress.
Professor Mugisha asked the awardees to maximise their time at the University and the scholarships offered to acquire both academic goals and life skills to be employable in the job market.
Professor Mugisha challenged other universities to also encourage their students to pay attention to co-curricular activities which are so relevant in real life.
Professor Mugisha said Cavendish University Uganda not only concentrates on skills based on the curriculum, the institution gives generic skills and other soft skills that enable a person to work.
He said that many universities are not concentrating on those other skills, instead they concentrate on accounting if you are an accounting student; they concentrate on law if you are a law student.
“Yes here at CUU we also concentrate on those skills in the curriculum but we add several other generic skills that a person needs, for instance every student has to do a bit of financial management, a bit of communication skills, everyone has to acquire IT skills and then we go into other soft skills like team work, responsibility, leadership, ability to organise, these are skills required for employability and universities must start focusing on them.”
Prof. Mugisha added that CUU is providing an example and taking the lead in showing that the Universities can do it and that when they do it, they can actually boost employment possibilities for their graduates.
So the University expects the awardees to concentrate on the academic performance as a requirement but also not forgetting the co-curricular activities.
Dr. Olive Sabiiti, the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academics said that in the pursuit to offer quality Education Cavendish University Uganda the 35 fully paid scholarships Awards for the 2022 January Intake were based on academic merit, leadership and Exemplary performance.
Dr. Olive Sabiiti, the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academics handing out one of the scholarships
“Cavendish University Uganda gives out scholarships because the Institution wants people to come and benefit from our excellent academic model,” she said.
Dr. Sabiiti further explained that whereas 60 scholarships are to be awarded this year responding to the community and societal needs, the applications received in the first intake were overwhelming.
She explains that there are different categories of scholarships, the majority of them are academic scholarships which are given to students who have gained at least 12 points at the A-Level with three principle passes and have 5 passes at O-level.
“After they meet the criteria they are then expected to do an aptitude test, once they pass the test then we can select usually our scholarship are very competitive, for instance at this intake we had 150 applications yet we took only 25 students so which means that although our benchmark was 12 points at A-level the majority of the applicants actually got 18, 17, 16 points so they were already high achieving students”.
But there are also other scholarships like the Benjamin MKapa Scholarship Award, Exemplary Performance Scholarship Award, The University Advisory Council Scholarship Awards, Rebecca Kadaga Scholarship Award among others.
For the aptitude test, we ensure that the students are given an assessment that mimics the situation in the real world of study and real world of work.
The assessment is given online on a platform known as a COURSERA because at the end of the day when they join Cavendish they study in a blended environment of physical and online classes so the student have to have those skills, at this point the students’ Online skills are also tested, Dr. Sabiiti.
She further explains the applicants’ attitudes are also tested because we believe that students’ attitude and not necessarily their aptitude or intelligence that is going to determine how far they will go their altitude
Students interested in the scholarships have to visit the Cavendish University Uganda Website to find out the information regarding the scholarship applications for a particular intake.
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