First degrees for city varsity

IT WAS an historic event at the Sol Plaatje University (SPU) in Kimberley this weekend as the first bachelor degrees in the history of the university was conferred to students during its third graduation ceremony.

Kimberley further cemented its status as the “City of Firsts” when 13 Sol Plaatje University students became the first on the African continent to receive Bachelor of Science in Data Science degrees. The SPU became the first in Africa to offer this course during 2015.

During the graduation ceremony, SPU’s first Bachelor of Education in Senior Phase and FET Teaching (B.Ed) degrees were awarded to 32 students, while degrees in Bachelor of Science in Data Science (B.Sc) were conferred to 13 students.

Diplomas and Higher Certificates were awarded to the remaining 74 graduates.

According to SPU, those graduating in the two Bachelor’s degree programmes completed their studies in minimum time. The B.Ed graduates are from the first group of students who registered at the university in 2014 and the BSc graduates are from the first group on this programme, who started in 2015.

At this graduation ceremony, 67 percent of graduates have completed their courses in minimum time. The average number of graduates who complete courses in minimum time for South African public higher education is only 27 percent.

Roughly 78 percent of the students who graduated, received state funding in some form.

The ceremony’s keynote speaker, the MEC for Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Norman Shushu, said that the graduation was a milestone, not only in the history of the university, Kimberley and the Northern Cape, but also for the entire post-apartheid South Africa and the African continent, adding that the names of the students would now become part of the history-makers of the Province.