Ahead of graduation, you aren’t a graduate; you are a graduand

In one of the WhatsApp groups that I belong to, a young member wrote to acknowledge and thank those who chipped in to facilitate her graduation ceremony. Her message that is mainly in Kiswahili includes the following sentiments:

“Napenda kumshukuru Mungu kwa kuniwezesha kumaliza masomo yangu ya BACHELOR DEGREE OF ACCOUNTANTS…”

When I communicated to her via “inbox” and told her that what she studied at university earned her a BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN ACCOUNTANCY (not bachelor degree of accountants), her response to me was terse. It read (wallah,I am reproducing it verbatim): “Sawa AINA shida…ASANTEE sana nashukuru.”

Personnel in organisations, whose roles include the thorny duty of receiving job applications and conducting interviews, are apt to tell you how treacherous it can be handling aspirants with good college grades but whose application letters are virtually incomprehensible!

It becomes most confounding when an applicant misnames the degree or diploma they received. And that, when such an applicant is from a reputable learning institution! One will be forgiven to wonder whether they still offer Communications Skills course at our universities.

A UDSM don in the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) during the 1980s, Shedu Chamungwana, used to tell his learners, “The education one receives must enable one, first and foremost, to describe and explain clearly one’s environment.”

If you spend three years at university, and at the end of it all, you cannot give, as they say, “to whomever it may concern,” the correct name for your degree, what else will you be able to appropriately name, describe or explain?

Come Friday, December 3, and there was a Page 16 story in the tabloid associated with this columnist, entitled: ‘ITA’s achievement as it holds its 14 graduation ceremony’. In this one, the scribbler says: “Out of 387 GRADUATES, 140 will be awarded EACFFP certificates…while 32 will receive CCTM…Other 110 will receive Bachelor Degrees in BCTM.”

This story was, of course, written ahead of the graduation day, meaning, our colleague errs when he refers to the 387 as graduates. Why, you only earn the designation “graduate” after being issued with a degree. Having passed your exams and qualified for a degree—as you wait for the graduation day—you are named GRADUAND or GRADUANT (not a graduate).

Our fellow scribbler, like my relative with her “degree of accountants”, errs when he refers to a section of ITA prospective graduates, the 110 of them, as persons who will receive “Bachelor Degrees”. Nope; these will receive “bachelor’s degrees.” Note: I also eradicate the unnecessary use of capitals (B) and (D).

Further on, the scribbler purports to report on what a senior ITA official said. So, he writes: “Apart from offering such training, Prof Jairo says the institute offers advisory services and IMPART (sic!) the staff of both TRA and Zanzibar Revenue Board including the staff of revenue authorities in Africa.”

Impart what? Or, impart with what? Why, the word means, “making information/knowledge known. It is not the same thing as “teach”, which seems to be what the scribbler had in mind. It means, the sentence should read something like: “…the institute offers advisory services and IMPARTS essential skills to the staff of…”

And then, Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, December 4 has a story on Page entitled, ‘Samia submits assets forms’. Therein, the scribbler says in her intro:

“President Samia Suluhu Hassan…recently became among the first public leaders to submit the Assets and Liabilities Declaration FORM to the Ethics Secretariat.”

One fills FORMS, not a “form”, like the scribbler seems to suggest since she uses this word, “form” at least 4 more times after doing so in her intro. It is baffling why the subeditor uses (correctly) the word “FORMS” in the headline and then lets the scribbler’s “form” pass without the essential suffix S in the text!

Ah, this treacherous language called English!