At least 150 students of Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) will miss today’s graduation over failure to meet academic requirements.

An official at the university said the most affected are evening students from the Faculty of Economics and Business. 

At least 1,830 students have been cleared to graduate, according to Prof. Wenceslas Nzabarirwa, the KIE vice rector for academic affairs.

"They [the students] can’t graduate since they have not completed their internship. It is part of the requirements to fulfill.”

After completing internship, Nzabariwa said, more time would be needed for assessing students’ works before they can graduate.

"Everything is streamlined; they will have their time this year, but first they need to complete their study programme.  We want to produce quality graduates; it’s not just about holding degrees,” he said.

Nzabarirwa attributed the problem to review of graduation time. Initially, the graduation would be held in November, by which time all the students would have completed their course requirements. 

The internship programme was initially meant to run from April to May, but it was moved to run from July 1 to August 31. 

Some students whose names are missing on the graduation list yesterday expressed disappointment, saying they were not informed in time.

Blaming KIE

They blamed the delay in finishing internship to a lack of lecturers in mid-term for evening students.

"They should have informed us before that we would not graduate, we didn’t have lecturers and now we are denied to graduate, this is too much to stomach,” Julienne Nahimana, a management student, said, adding that KIE was responsible for the delays in finishing their internship.

Laurence Uwamahoro, another student, said they wrote to the administration questioning the decision but got no response.

"This was KIE’s error. If KIE changed the programme of graduation from November, they should have revised the internship period accordingly,” she said.

On whether the affected students will be able to graduate this year, Dr Innocent Mugisha, the executive director of the National Council for Higher Education, said KIE could arrange for their graduation if resources allow. 

"It is not a matter of permission, it is a ceremony which can be done by the institution as long as the students fulfilled all academic requirements,” he said.