Africa-Press – South-Africa. A group of University of Fort Hare BCom general accounting students has been left in limbo after the university informed them last week they will no longer graduate on Thursday as planned because there is an issue with their course’s registration.
News24 can reveal the dean of the faculty of management and commerce, Professor Liezel Cilliers, broke the news to the 25 students eight days before graduation day.
The university hopes to accommodate the students at the spring graduation ceremony in September because the Council on Higher Education (CHE) is still reviewing an application for the renaming of the course.
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The students told News24 the 11th-hour notice had forced them and their families to cancel already booked air tickets and accommodation.
Some of the students had families coming from other countries.
In the virtual meeting on Wednesday, Cilliers told the students although fully accredited, the BCom general accounting degree is registered as the mainstream BCom in accounting degree, yet the courses are different.
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Cilliers told the students the SA Qualifications Authority (SAQA) needed this to be rectified first and further told the students this was not something that could be fixed before Thursday.
To sort this, university spokesperson JP Roodt, said the university had applied to the CHE and Department of Higher Education and Training for a programme name change and to issue a unique SAQA ID number for the BCom general accounting degree.
He added the issue with the course was while the BCom in general accounting has a unique CHE number, it shared the same SAQA ID number with the BCom in accounting.
“The general accounting degree [60014] has similar outcomes to the accounting degree but is differentiated in the level at which the accounting subject is taught and assessed. The general accounting students do general accounting instead of accounting,” said Roodt.
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He added: “As a result, the university applied for a name change and is awaiting the new SAQA ID, before the affected students may graduate.”
Roodt said the above process was a Higher Education Qualifications Framework alignment process of which the CHE was aware of.
While the university only informed students last week, it confirmed its senate knew about it since March 2022.
“The university is awaiting confirmation of the name change as well as a SAQA ID. We continue to engage and encourage the authority to expedite the process,” said Roodt.
A student, who asked not to be named, said: “My brother has his tickets booked from Joburg for this. Outfits have been paid for and a lot of things prepared. The university only tells us a week before the graduation ceremony that we won’t graduate.”
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