Towards developing a collaborative PhD program across ARUA member universities: experiences from the Makerere University, Uganda

Abstract

This report highlights the status of PhD education in Uganda, using the case of Makerere University as the only ARUA member in the country. It provides an overview of the country's socio-economic status, which has a bearing on how universities organise PhD programmes and which could influence the conceptualisation, design and implementation of collaborative programmes as envisaged by ARUA. It further details the national and institutional policy and operational frameworks for PhD programmes in Uganda, the nature of student access and progression policies across the programmes, opportunities for designing collaborative arrangements, and challenges that need to be addressed. The report is divided into five sections. The next section provides an overview of Uganda's socio-economic and political dynamics. Section two provides a brief description of the Ugandan higher education landscape. Section three delves into the case study of the university and the two selected programmes. Section four presents the findings from the data collected from the two case study programmes. Section five provides a best practice case study while section six presents some recommendations and conclusions.