The University has also been involved in the drive to grow more food. There are little shambas all over the campus and lecturers proudly display sacks of rice in their studies. The Agricultural Faculty at Morogoro has gained great praise for ‘turning into a productive unit instead of just being a demonstration piece’. On the 1,073 hectare farm the Faculty produced a bumper crop, estimated at 30,000 bags of maize, 1,800 bags of rice, 1,200 bags of sorghum and 450 tons of cassava. This was being harvested by volunteers from the Defence Force, secondary schools , Corporation employees and others.
The University is also in the first year of the new system of student intake. This means that students do not enter straight from secondary school but only after they have been in employment for some years and then with the recommendation of their employer and the local TANU branch. Arts and Social Science lecturers speak with pleasure of the increased maturity, responsiveness and questioning of these students; the Science Faculty is worried about the danger of students becoming very stale in the gap between school and university; meanwhile an unintended result is the drop in the proportion of women students entering the university, many women having become mothers during the period since leaving school and finding it difficult to leave their families.
The University has to seek to make do with a considerable reduction in its operating grant. At the same time there has been announced a plan for major extensions, to be constructed at the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Agriculture, and the main campus. Developments will include further student accommodation and dining rooms; a new surgical unit with two operating theatres; the building of an aquarium at the Marine Biology Station at Kunduchi, and many other projects.
A catalogue of ‘publications produced by the departments, institutes and bureaux of the University’ has been issued. This most useful listing is some hundred pages long and indicates which publications are available free and the price of the rest. It can be obtained from Aidan Turner Bishop, Librarian, Acquisitions Department, University of Dar es Salaam Library, P.O. Box 35092, University Hill, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The publications themselves may be ordered from the University Bookshop, P.O. Box 35090.