GSB MBA cracks global 100 elite ranking

The UCT Graduate School of Business's (GSB) full-time MBA programme has become the first in South Africa to receive an international ranking, this after the Financial Times' Top 100 MBA Rankings placed the GSB programme at number 82 in its 2005 rankings. This is the first time a South African or African MBA programme has made it onto the prestigious Financial Times' Top 100 list. In addition, the GSB MBA ranked in the Top 10 in two of the evaluation categories.

Old friends, new deal

Agreements of cooperation are often little more than starting blocks, sketchy preludes to signatories sitting down to hammer out details and scare up funds. That's not the case, though, in the agreements inked by UCT's Data Network Architecture Group (DNA for short) of the Department of Computer Science, with two prestigious international research institutions at the end of 2004. Its "deals" with the Grande Ecole - the ivy league of French universities - Institut National Des Télécommunications (INT) and the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland, both Nobel-rich institutions, are what DNA's Professor Pieter Kritzinger calls "formal affirmations" of relationships that stretch back a decade or more. DNA staff and students have regularly spent time at the French and Swiss institutions, with one UCT student completing his PhD at INT last year. The UCT group also collaborates on a host of high-level projects with their INT and IBM counterparts.

Rhodes talk a sell-out

Summer School had many hits this year, no less so a talk arranged exclusively for UCT alumni on Cecil John Rhodes, who always makes an entertaining subject. Speaking to a full house, guest lecturer Desmond Colborne unpacked Rhodes' controversial legacy, touching on the land and diamond baron's contributions to Cape Town - he turned it into a bustling, multicultural centre, says Colborne - and UCT, which rests on Rhodes' Groote Schuur Estate.

UCT rules the world

UCT runs one world-beating student exchange programme. So says the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), a US-based group that arranges semester-abroad opportunities - at universities like UCT - for American and Canadian students from its consortium of 200 North American institutions. At its annual conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in November, CIEE named UCT as the winner of its 2004 programme excellence award. The accolade recognises the quality of learning, teaching and the overall exchange experience at host institutions. "For us that means students become engaged with the host country, its culture and its issues," says CIEE's programme director for Africa, Bradley Rink. The CIEE currently has offices at 60 institutions from 30 countries, all up for the award. That tally includes a CIEE study centre at UCT, managed by Quinton Redcliffe and Felicity Baker from quarters at the International Academics' Exchange Office (IAPO), which acts as go-between for students with UCT. CIEE usually brings over about 50 students to UCT each semester, but will boast a bumper crop of 100 - including a Japanese student - for the first semester of 2005. Next year, the organisation kick-starts a service-learning programme with Shawco in which its students' community work are tied to their academics.