Johannesburg - Leading universities such as Wits, the University of Johannesburg, UCT, the University of Pretoria and the University of KwaZulu-Natal are reporting a sharp rise in applications for undergraduate places this year.
But thousands of matriculants who have passed with bachelor’s exemption face rejection by these universities amid escalating demand for places in undergraduate study.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga released the national senior certificate results this week, which reflected that 610 178 full-time candidates wrote the exams, of which 151 830 matriculants achieved bachelor’s passes.
The Free State recorded a 93.2% pass rate, the highest in the country. The second best-performing province was the Western Cape (87.7%) followed by Gauteng (87%) and the North West (86.2%). However, some of these matriculants will not be able to achieve their dreams of studying at university as few spaces are available at SA universities. Of the seven top universities, a total number of 54400 first-year places are available for the nearly 600000 applications for first-year study.
The University of Johannesburg has received nearly 135 000 applications but can only accommodate 10 000 students.
UCT has received nearly 27 000 applications but can only take in 4 200 first-year students.
At Wits, applications for first-year study stand at 70 000 but it has place for only 6 200 students. The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth has received 112 000 applications for the 6 500 places available.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal has received about 89 700 applications for the 8 700 places it has available for first-year students, while the University of Pretoria has received 38 121 applications but can accommodate 9 500 first-year students only.