The University of Cape Town is one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen! Furthermore it is overseeing this beautiful town from a mountaintop surrounded by plush greenery and blue skies, like in a post card! The business school, however, is part of the waterfront and is housed in a former prison that has been fully renovated and turned up looking like a series of classrooms in the midst of a tranquil courtyard with little signs left of any horrible sad stories of the people imprisoned in there...
We had a couple of lectures at the university; one that we shared with the communications group given by a local author/professor that seems to cause my business students to be grateful for having chosen to study a field like business that was less froth with philosophical musings, while the other being an observation we made of a graduate business class let by a dynamic business professor.
In both cases it was made clear to us that University of Cape Town is clearly a fine academic institution. We were also pleased to hear that....
During the apartheid era, roughly 1960-1990, UCT consistently opposed apartheid, and was a bastion of liberalism and racial integration. 1987 particularly saw frequent clashes between protesting students and police. The official student newspaper, Varsity, frequently had its journalists and editors come under scrutiny from the ruling apartheid National Party government.
As for the business school, their own words express it best:
The Graduate School of Business is developing new streams of learning around communication, leadership, entrepreneurship and sustainable development. This enriches the learning experience, helping to ensure that students gain the broadest possible perspective of business.
The school is the only business school in South Africa to make these streams an explicit part of its core curriculum.
The school also supports two centres that are dedicated to developing a deeper and broader understanding of these areas:
- Southern Africa-United States Centre for Leadership and Public Values
- Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Some two-thirds of the world's population lives in emerging economies, which are characterised by an unusual degree of complexity and uncertainty. The significance of these regions to international business, and to the role of business schools in equipping leaders and managers to be effective in such circumstances, is obvious.
The GSB is taking advantage of the fact that it is located in Africa to respond to these challenges. It is pioneering a new model of a business school, one that is both international in orientation and suited to countries where simultaneously there are imperatives of socio-political transformation, international competitiveness and economic development.
The school believes that it is only by taking this route that it will equip business leaders with the knowledge, depth and vision needed to steer South Africa and other developing societies to success both at home and on the international stage.
Through its research, the GSB is enlarging and articulating its understanding of the role and future of business in emerging economies. This research is laying essential foundations on which to build South Africa's international competitiveness.
Current research programmes range from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which looks at South African entrepreneurs in a global context and at what makes them successful or not, to individual research carried out by faculty and students.
A key part of the school's philosophy is to ensure the relevance of the curriculum to local and national circumstances and needs, as well as to ensure that, wherever feasible, its activities are undertaken in a way that achieves positive developmental impacts.
In the Western Cape, the school has initiated a number of projects that are designed to add value to the local economy, as well as to enrich students' appreciation of context.
Examples include:
- the work of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which is working with local businesses, ranging from township enterprises to those that are knowledge-based and internationally ambitious
- the Centre for Leadership and Public Values (CLPV), which is running an Emerging Leaders' Programme that is engaging directly with the needs of, and challenges facing, young leaders across Southern Africa.
The School, in association with Cambridge University and the National Business Initiative, is also involved in running a programme that is grappling with critical issues around sustainable development in Africa.
In the last decade, the GSB has been building its connections with Africa.
The school now regularly hosts students and short course delegates from sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2002 it began a recruitment drive in East Africa.
Other initiatives include a distinctive programme for policy-makers, regulators and executives on the privatisation and regulation of public utilities in Africa.
There is also an executive development programme that is tailored to the needs of multinational companies operating in Africa.
The school also now runs its flagship executive short course, the Programme for Management Development, in Kenya once a year.
Beyond Africa, the GSB is working to form additional alliances with top-class institutions in Asia and other developing countries to complement and augment its partnerships in Africa and the industrialised world.
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