Jameson Hall put on its ceremonial cloak again last week, capping a bumper corps of 78 PhD candidates, part of the cohort of 1 273 students capped at UCT's mid-year June graduations on 11 and 12 June.

The bumper crop of students who received their degrees and diplomas was up from 1 113 students last year, and 1 092 in 2007.

In the lead was the Faculty of Commerce with 627 graduates, followed by the faculty of Humanities with 209, the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment with 134, the Faculty of Health Sciences with 109, the Faculty Science with 101, and the Faculty of Law with 92.

In keeping with the annual trend, this June graduation was marked by a high number of postgraduate students finishing their studies, their theses and dissertations stretched over the academic semesters.

The provisional PhD counts for the various faculties are: 23 for science, 20 for the humanities, 14 for health sciences, 12 for commerce, six for engineering and the built environment, and three for law.