Traditional universities could be a dying breed. This is why
Research suggests that traditional universities in Africa are on the way out, as technology and online models advance.
Deirdre Carabine is director of programmes at the Virtual University of Uganda, sub-Saharan Africa’s “first online-only university” which she co-founded. She studied at the Queen's University of Belfast and University College Dublin, gaining a PhD in philosophy from the former and a PhD in Classics from the latter. She was one of the first post-doctoral “Newman” Scholars at UCD and taught both there and at Queen's from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s. She relocated to Uganda in 1993 to teach at the newly-founded Uganda Martyrs University. Having been Director of the Institute of Ethics and Development Studies and the newly-created School of Postgraduate Studies, she then became Deputy Vice-Chancellor. She moved to Kampala in 2006 to become the pioneer Vice-Chancellor at International Health Sciences University. She was also the pioneer Vice-Chancellor of VUU.
Having taught in Uganda for twenty years, Prof. Carabine's teaching specializations are international development, gender issues, ethics and integrity, and environment issues. She has, over the years, supervised more than 45 BA dissertations, 27 Master's dissertations, and 5 PhD theses. Her current areas of administrative expertise include curriculum development, educational administration, and the use of ICTs in the delivery of higher education. Prof. Carabine speaks English, French, German, and Irish.