The Law Development Center (LDC) has asked the Law Council to investigate suspicious first class degrees issued by several Universities in Uganda.
LDC says receive abnormally high numbers of students with high grades, but during training, these clog LDC’s system due to the failure to pass numerous subjects.
This was revealed by Ms Annet Karungi, Head Bar Course at LDC, while appearing before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee.
LDC officials were appearing to defend the 2024/25 national budget framework paper.
Members of Parliament (MPs) had asked the Centre to explain why some students were not admitted to the Centre, despite paying for the course.
“We have observed that the pattern in the last academic years they are really not necessarily the best, and many of them (students) actually end up clogging the system, repeating various subjects. So it is something we have shared with the Law Council and we are hopeful as a regulator, they will take it up and address it at the time of regulation and accreditation of the law Schools,” said Karungi.
Karungi denied allegations that LDC declined to admit some students, saying there is no student who paid for the current academic year for the current intake of 2023/24 and was not admitted.
She however noted that during the current intake, LDC received more than 3000 applicants and because of the limited facilities, all these students could not be taken on.
“In the process of admission, we realized that something is coming up, but I believe Law Council will handle it. You find that applicants from certain Universities, almost the entire class have first class or upper second class, so we have to devise a fair method of admission and we decided to take on 60% from each University. So what we did, ranking from the first to 60% , we took on the top most from each University, the rest were admitted and given offer letters for next academic year, which is really guaranteed,” explained Karungi.
