HARARE Polytechnic has been hit by a massive low uptake of their courses after the institution started demanding ‘O’ Level mathematics passes for most of its courses, NewsDay has established.
BY SILENCE CHARUMBIRA
The development has forced authorities at the institution to discontinue some courses, which have as low as four students per class.
Some of the affected courses are Higher National Diploma (HND) courses in commerce, which were discontinued in February this year. NewsDay has established that the college has since stopped National Diploma (ND) 2 cosmetology classes where there were reportedly only four students. Students, who spoke to NewsDay, say the institution made a verbal announcement that their classes, were being discontinued.
“They just told us when we were about to sit for our exams that our classes were being stopped. We wonder why they did not tell us when we registered initially that there will be no classes,” one affected students said on condition of anonymity.
HND commerce students alleged, before the first term ended recently, they were spending their days sitting in their classrooms, as lecturers had stopped attending.
“Courses are being stopped because they say the number of students in a class does not meet the stipulated figures yet there is no regulation that enforces that. We had already paid $325 in fees and signed contracts which bind the college to offer service to us,” another student said.
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“Oddly, this is only affecting the commerce division. I do not know why, but other divisions such as engineering, mass communication, information technology and printing have similar numbers or one student per course, which is less than those in the commerce division.”
Another student said the class with the highest students was purchasing and supply, which has 12 students, but authorities said it was not viable.
According to information gathered by NewsDay, marketing has three students, human resources management has four, pensions management has one and transport management has one.
Harare Poly principal, Tafadzwa Mudondo said he was still looking into the issue and debating whether to flight another advertisement for the department.
“We look at the number of students that will have registered. If a class has one student then it is not economical to run such a class. There is a required standard that we have, for instance, commerce should have at least 20 students and Engineering 16,” he said. “We will have another advert for the classes and if we have the required students we will continue.”
