South African DL engineering degrees

Hi group:

I have a student that is looking for a DL engineering degree from South Africa, the main reason for this is to qualify for an engineering license in Canada since the professional engineering associations accept degrees from this country.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Usually when people talk about South African Bachelors degree programs through DL they're talking about UNISA (though there are undoubtedly exceptions to this). Unfortunately, UNISA doesn't have any engineering programs. They do have a Computer Science program but you didn't say what branch of engineering in which your student has an interest. You may have more luck looking at the South African Technikons. As this is not even close to my own interests, I've never explored which of the Technikons even has DL programs. There's a book available here:
http://www.studysa.co.za
***DISCLAIMER - I've never read this book and have no idea if it's any good.
There's also a website that lists the Technikons:
http://www.southafrica.co.za/edu/technikons.html
Good luck,
Jack

 

First, I would be careful about assuming that all engineering degrees from South Africa will be accepted. I obtained my undergrad chemical engineering degree from Cape Town, whose programme is accredited by IChemE (i.e. the UK professional institution). Similarly the Civil Eng., Electrical Eng., Mech. Eng. programmes are accredited by ICE, IEE, and IMechE respectively. I know nothing about licensing in Canada, but I do recall that Cape Town considered the IChemE (etc.) accreditation essential for its graduates to work as engineers overseas. My brother obtained his degree from the ICE-accredited Civil Eng. department at Cape Town, and had no trouble having this accepted in California, where he now has PE licenses in Civil Engineering and Structural Engineering.

As Jack says, Unisa does not have engineering programmes. They do have an articulation agreement with Potchefstroom whereby students do their first year by DL through Unisa, and the remaining 3 years on campus in Potchefstroom.

Technikon SA is primarily a DL institution (and is slated to be merged with Unisa). TSA offers BTech degrees in various engineering disciplines. I don't believe that they can be completed entirely by distance learning. Also, I don't know whether they would be acceptable for licensure as a professional engineer.

 

Engineering at the Technikons

Currently I am a provisional student in one of the Technikon's distance learning Masters of Technology in Chemical Engineering Programs.

(Provisional just means that I am workin on my research proposal which takes about 3 months)

(Since I a just starting, I can't give you a bunch of details, but will say, so far the technikon has been fantastic to work with, getting most emails back in a day, with the head of the department doing alot of the leg work)

If you have a pseudo-engineering degree (e.g., BS geology--water) and have worked in an engineering field, I would contact each of the Civil Enginnering/Industrial Engineering Department Heads, and see if you could provisionaly enroll in a graduate program. If you don't have a psuedo- engineering degree, or even if you do, you will most likey have to show how your education and experience meet their BS intent. They seemed pretty flexible here as I only showd in the field equivalence.


(I have a BS in engineering, but a completely diffferent kind. I showed how I meet the intent. What is the cost of an email to giv it a try!)

Please note: If you do not have a BS degree, and are interested in geting a BS from a technikon, A BS from a techikon is not always considered a four year degree, but a three year degee..