This year’s Grade 10s could be the first class to take part in a new centralised admission system for SA’s universities.
|||Cape Town - This year’s Grade 10 pupils could find themselves the first class to take part in the government’s new centralised admission system for all of the country’s universities.
The advantages of a centralised admission system are:
- The payment of a single application fee, rather than a fee to each university approached;
- Immediate information about which universities still have places; and
- More efficient processing of late applications.
Universities would still have the final say in which students they accepted.
The Department of Higher Education and Training said they expected their Central Applications Service to be introduced in phases from 2015.
Deputy Higher Education and Training Minister Mduduzi Manana said this month: “The department will be developing and testing the IT system for the Central Applications Service during this financial year and will pilot the system for phased implementation from 2015.”
The department said an electronic system would sift through all the applications and direct them to the applicable university, which would be responsible for the selection and admission of the applicants.
Applicants would have to pay a fee to use the system but the department said it would be an affordable, once-off fee. Once the system has been finalised, applicants to all universities and universities of technology will have to apply through the system, which will also be able to direct candidates to institutions where places are still available.
Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said last year that among the aims of the system would be to address the problem of prospective students who decided only in January to start looking for places for that year. It would also help those who heard only in January that they had not been accepted at their institution of choice, and then wanted to apply somewhere else.
The death of the mother of a prospective student during a stampede at the University of Johannesburg last year had focused attention on the problem of late “walk-ins”.
Earlier this year, a Central Applications Clearing facility was established as a precursor to the system. The purpose of the clearing house was to support matric pupils who wanted to be admitted to tertiary institutions but who had not yet been accepted.
It also helped prospective students who qualified for entrance to a tertiary institutions but had not applied.
ilse.fredericks@inl.co.za
Cape Argus