SENEGAL: Freshers take up university places

About 30,000 freshers are starting their studies in Senegal's public and private higher education institutions, announced Amadou Tidiane Bâ, Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research, at a ministerial meeting.

Agence de Presse Sénégalaise of Dakar reported the minister as saying universities should have the capacity to cater for all of the new intake, which comprised 21,000 arts and humanities students and 9,000 science students.

Most of the science students would attend the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (Ucad) of Dakar - 4,000 in the faculty of sciences and 3,000 in the economics and management faculty, and the remaining 2,000 in other public universities, said APS.

Of the arts students, 15,000 would go Ucad's arts faculty, 4,000 to the faculty of law, and 2,000 would attend other institutions.

Meanwhile, reported Le Soleil, the Université Gaston-Berger (UGB) of Saint-Louis would cater for 1,500 new students, an increase of 30%.

Two new university departments had been created this new academic year, for health sciences and for the sciences of agronomy and aquaculture and food technology, said Le Soleil. In addition, new distance education programmes would start in January with five masters and five bachelors courses.

Le Soleil reported that the university's rector, Professor Mary Teuw Niane, was planning to introduce a number of programmes in the departments of law and politics, applied sciences and technologies, economics and management, and arts and social sciences. From November, a call for bids for a masters in cyberspace law would be launched.

The paper said Niane recalled that it was thanks to help from the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie that UGB had received complete programmes for the distance education channel and technological provision.

The server, previously in Strasbourg, France, had been relocated at UGB which could now control the whole online operation, its management and technological infrastructure.