The main theme for the forum is Good Governance for Sustainable Quality University Education in Tanzania. The main objective of the forum is to bring together key stakeholders in higher education to share common experiences and best practices on university good governance and come up with strategies and policy implications for different stakeholders in addressing current and future challenges facing the sector in the country.
“No country can ever make a leap forward to modernity without a critical mass of a diverse and well-educated people at higher education level,” Dr Kawambwa who was the guest of honour said. He explained that in order to meet local, regional and international human resource needs and hence transform the country’s economy into middle income category by 2025, at least higher learning institutions must produce 80,000 graduates annually.
He said that the government’s efforts have seen the increase of enrolment by 19 per cent that is from 139,638 students from 2010/2011 to 166,484 in 2011/2012. “This has been among others, the result of an increase in the number of higher learning institutions to 46 and also increased demand from secondary education and tertiary institutions graduates,” he said.
He noted that experience has shown that promoting good governance is a challenging task, but something that must be done to spur development and confidence in the economy. “Good governance must be promoted in higher educational institutions, not just in words, but in practice,” he said.
Mzumbe University as a current chair of CVCPT is organizing the forum on behalf of CVCPT. The forum is attended by Chairpersons of University Councils, Vice Chancellors, Principals and Provosts, Deputy Vice Chancellors, Deputy Principals and Provosts of Private and Public universities in Tanzania.
Commissioned papers include Governance and Performance of Universities in Tanzania: Trends and Challenges; Governance structures, processes, relationships and opportunities in running universities; and Students Governance and Democratization of Universities.
Others are on the role of Information Communication Technology (ICTs) in university governance in Tanzania; Governance, interdependencies and linkages amongst higher education institutions in Tanzania and Workload models and human resource management in universities in Tanzania: what can we learn from each other.
The CVCPT Chairman, Prof Joseph Kuzilwa, said that the deliberations on these issues will not only have shared useful experiences and best practices for improving the running of universities, but come up with practical and implementable policy implications and recommendations.
