{"id":398215,"date":"2020-05-16T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T09:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=398215"},"modified":"2020-05-15T13:36:04","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T11:36:04","slug":"south-africas-new-university-could-accept-its-first-students-by-2022-heres-the-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/398215\/south-africas-new-university-could-accept-its-first-students-by-2022-heres-the-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s new university could accept its first students by 2022 &#8211; here&#8217;s the plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Higher Education, Science and Technology has detailed its plans to open a new university in Ekurhuleni.<\/p>\n<p>First announced by president Cyril Ramaphosa in his February 2020 state of the nation address, the university will primarily focus on science, innovation and technology.<\/p>\n<p>Presenting in a parliamentary briefing on Thursday (14 May), the Department of Higher Education provided the following planned timelines for the establishment of the new university:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A feasibility study will now be undertaken to establish the nature and scope as well as the location of the new institution in the Ekurhuleni metropolitan by March 2021;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A plan for the establishment of the new institution, based on the feasibility study, will then be finalised by June 2021;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Funding for the new institution will be in line with the findings of the feasibility study and the plan must be secured from voted funds from the national fiscus;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The promulgation of the new institution as a university college in terms of the Higher Education Act, provided funding is secured, should be completed by December 2021;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The first student intake into the university college is planned for January 2022 &#8211; assuming there is some existing infrastructure in which to accommodate students.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/77od1HJWVBI\" width=\"640\" height=\"430\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>A real &#8216;university&#8217;?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The department noted that in terms of the Higher Education Act, the institution cannot be established immediately as a university, but must first list as either a higher education college or a university college.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, the department is also developing a 10-year development plan (2022 \u2013 2032) for the growth of the university college to establish a fully-fledged university. These plans should be finalised by March 2023, it said.<\/p>\n<p>In the time being, the institution will operate as a &#8216;university college&#8217; under the governance of a selected university (identified in the feasibility study) until it meets the requirements of a fully-fledged university.<\/p>\n<p>Once these requirements are met, it will be\u00a0declared as an autonomous university (a juristic person in terms of the Higher Education Act) and operate under an independent council.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/398027\/heres-when-south-african-students-will-return-to-university\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Here\u2019s when South African students will return to university<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Higher Education, Science and Technology has detailed its plans to open a new university in Ekhuruleni.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":331923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-398215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398215"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398471,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398215\/revisions\/398471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}