Harmonization of equivalent applicant’s qualification results for future CAS extension

The development of Central Admission System (CAS) for higher learning institutions was a great achievement in admitting students into higher levels of education in Tanzania. Currently, on its third year of operation, CAS does not deal with equivalent entry applicants as a result they are still handled by respective institutions. Having equivalent applicants applying into specific higher learning institutions results into a number of problems, including the following: applicants were allocated into more than one institution, some institutions received more students compared to others, and higher cost of application for admission forms became a burden to some applicants since they should apply into more than one institution to increase their chance of being admitted. This study found out that, there were some challenges that CAS developers faced during implementing equivalent applicants’ module at the first place, including other diploma qualifications recognized by NACTE having different results format, and unavailability of common storage for those results. In addressing those challenges the researcher harmonized different applicants’ results formats into a single standard format, and developed a prototype that brings together those different results formats into a common standard format. The prototype was evaluated, and most evaluators agreed that, the prototype performed conversion well