By Mary Poni
The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology has declared admission to public and private universities open.
Minister Gabriel Changson Chang said that the students are free to apply in universities and colleges of their choice.
Admission to all universities in South Sudan is now open. Students all over the country can apply in whatever course in universities they prefer,” Gabriel pronounced.
However, he advised the students to choose carefully when applying.
“We have number of staff to be followed when applying. For a student to be admitted, they should have several choices from five and above. For example, science students can choose faculties like medicine, pharmacy, engineering, agriculture including others. Because if you failed the first choice, then it will help you to have the opportunity to compete in the second one,” he advised.
Changson noted that it is important that students and their parents know very well that the admission of their children depends on the selection of choices.
He said there are two phases in admission – saying that those not accepted in phase one will be given another opportunity to apply for other vacancies in the universities phase two.
“The direct intake will be handled directly by the university and in phase two. Note that those taken directly by the university may pay less. And those who are not accepted in one and two phases would have to pay more to support the universities,” he said.
However, he directs universities to abide by the rules of admission.
“In direct admission, we urge all our universities to respect and abide by our regulations of the admissions. Otherwise, if there are any breaches of those regulations, this time, we will punish any university that does not comply with those regulations,” he stressed.
He identified issues where universities accept students without acquiring national numbers from the ministry of higher education or from the admission office.
“In direct admission, we want the universities to process the applications of those students but before they start, they have to be submitted to the admission office for verification because we are also mindful about weeding out forged certificates,” he explained.
“We want to go by the book because we don’t want to use shortcuts. This year, we have decided to be very strict,” Minister Gabriel stated.
He said the ministry is supposed to launch the admission of the students to the public universities every year but unfortunately it doesn’t come regularly for a number of reasons.
According to him, delay from the ministry of general education is the one making the ministry of higher education to delay launching this activity. Nonetheless, he said both ministries are working very hard to make sure that everything is done on time because by law, admissions are supposed to be launched one month after the announcement of the secondary schools’ results.