MUT campus proposed for South Coast
The university's deputy vice-chancellor in the Resources and Planning department, Johan van Koller, told Fever that he can confirm that MUT is planning to establish a satellite campus in Pennington under Umdoni Municipality.
Plans are underway to build a Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) campus on the South Coast.
The university’s deputy vice-chancellor in the Resources and Planning department, Johan van Koller, told Fever that he can confirm that MUT is planning to establish a satellite campus in Pennington under Umdoni Municipality.
Van Koller said this is subject to the outcome of a feasibility study which will be conducted by the university and approved by their administrator/council.
The deputy vice-chancellor said the institution was approached by Umdoni Municipality’s office of the municipal manager to consider establishing a campus within the municipality.
He said construction can only start once the feasibility study has been completed, adding that they are planning to conduct the feasibility study before the end of June 2024.
“It is not possible at this stage to provide the estimated costs of the campus. MUT will be applying for funding from the Department of Higher Education and Training (from their Infrastructure and Efficiency Grant) to develop and construct the satellite campus,” he said.
He added that they cannot indicate the exact courses that will be offered at the satellite campus, saying that the plan is to begin with short courses in management sciences which will later on be complemented with formal courses, as the need may direct them.
Last week, Umdoni’s acting mayor Thabani Dube said they are proud to have a relationship with the MUT.
Dube said as the municipality, they understand that people want to go to Durban to further their studies, but they don’t have the money.
He said they are hopeful that these people will benefit from this project.
“Some people are not motivated to study but now with the possibility of a MUT campus in our municipality, they might be encouraged to do so. As Umdoni, we are focused on things that affect the youth. We will be in talks with the university and we want to make it clear that we don’t want courses such as administration or tourism. We want courses that focus on skills so that even if the youth end up unemployed, at least they will have the skills to make a life for themselves,” said Dube.
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