University of South Africa

Does anyone know if they are answering emails from prospective students any quicker? I had mailed them months ago about information on enrolling and never did get a response.

 

Hello I'm new here, so here goes.
Am a 3'rd year B.Sc Mathematical Statistics student at UNISA.
I love the degree program as it is given to me.
I only have to hand in 3 assignments per module for a cumulative year mark that makes up 10% of my final mark.

No classes.
No groupwork.
No homework.

Just you and all them funny theorems with a bottle of beer to steady your nerves.
And finally that 2 hour exam at the end of the year that makes up 90% of your final mark for a module.

It's do or die with such an arrangement.

I have never worked harder because of this.

Anyway, since a number of posters originate from the USA I thought this link would be interesting. Apparently the second largest body of students that is registered at UNISA are in fact US citizens ...

Go figure ...

http://www.schoolaah.com/University_of_South_Africa.htm

 

Out of curiosity, how far do you have to travel to take your exams?

 

I think that in South Africa the Universities use the same "jargon" as in UK.

A Module is, I believe, a course in US terminology. For example, I did a "Research Methods Module" for my Masters, usually every module has a distinguish acronym and a number such as RME 4560. The acronym refers to the module title and the first number refers to the year, in this case is a grad studies module.

Every academic year is composed by different modules; every module has certain credit points, the sum of the credit points lead to the degree. At undergrad you usually study four 30 credit modules per year for three years, for a total of 360 credit points. At grad level, the total credit points are 180.

The tuition fee is the money you pay for your module or for academic year.

For instance in my University the tuition is as follows:

UK and EU students: per credit point/per 10-credit point module

Prices in pounds sterling

Undergraduate: £xx / £xxx
Postgraduate: £xx / £xxx
Doctorate: £xxxxx per annum

I hope this will help.

 

UK vs USA terms

Basic difference of educational jargon in UK and USA:

UK Course (or sometimes programme)= USA Degree Program

UK Module - USA Course

UK Tuition = USA "Instruction" or "teaching" - the act of teaching the subject (for example, most of the external programmes from the University of London have no "tuition", they only evaluate your knowledge with tests)

UK Fees = USA Tuition (sometimes it's called tuition fees in UK, because it's the fee that pays for the tuition. For some reason this meaning got lost in American English and people just say tuition).

UK Postgraduate = USA Graduate

 

I live in South Africa, near a coastal town called Mossel Bay. My exams are written at the South Cape Technical College. It's about 15 minutes drive away from me.

 

Personally (if faced with the choice of listing one or the other), I would put the UNISA degree on my resume and leave off the Excelsior degree.

 

If the numbers can be believed some other information is even more interesting (going up a level from the student number at UNISA above).

Rhodes University 6.6% United States
University of Pretoria 6.6% United States
University of the Witwatersrand 1.3% United States
University of Cape Town 4.2% United States

Rhodes & Wits are very well recognized internationally.

Now, can you do an external PhD from them?

 

KariS

It's unbelievable what you just posted.

As for external Ph.D's that I cannot help you with.

At the residential Universities as opposed to UNISA one can do a Ph.D part time.

That's just my 5 cents .

Thanks a lot.

 

That is an excellent point when you consider that most people are not that knowledgeable when it comes to distant learning. Thus, a foreign degree would likely infer that the person presenting such a degree, came from a foreign country.

 

I would be curious to know which degree would find more acceptance in applying for a job in the US.

 

MBA distance learning

Want to apply for MBA degree distance learning programme, UNISA (University of South Africa). What are the procedures?

 

Any info on application/entry?

 

have you been to their website?

 

Many have recommended this school. Is it well worth the education to attend?

 

If I can pretend to understand other people and their motives . . .

I think that, in general, people who become interested or attend UNISA fall into one of two categories (maybe both).
Either they have so little money (me) that a South African degree becomes virtually the only possibility or their subject area of interest is rare enough that another DL option doesn't clearly exist. How useful is such a degree. I don't think there's any single answer to that question. I don't know of anyone who requires licensure (psychology, teaching, nursing, accounting, etc.) who has satisfied the requirements for licensure with a UNISA degree. That's not to say it's impossible, I just don't know about it.

 

MC,

You've raised an excellent point. This site has provided me with an excellent background on educational topics such as: accreditation, distance learning (duh!), pedagogy, etc.

I too have gone back and re-read what I have written here over the past five years (not all of it, of course!). Sometimes I wonder if I've lost a bit of the "fire in the belly"!

 

I think your comments/concerns are valid.

Abner

 

Has anyone applied directly to UNISA since the application procedures were supposedly streamlined somewhat?