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Unisa has been struggling to get 60K+ certificates to students

The University of South Africa (Unisa) has issued a statement to the public, and the press, addressing “serious [concerning] reports in … print and social media” with this statement also providing a look into tens of thousands of unclaimed certificates.

Said statement was released by Professor Puleng LenkaBula, the Principal and Vice Chancellor of Unisa.

The full statement – which was made available on Twitter and is embedded at the bottom of this story – does not mention which specific piece of media it is addressing, but it is likely this one from the Sunday Times (paywall). News24 has additional coverage of this and is not behind a paywall.

We won’t delve too much into the claims made in those stories and Unisa’s response as we’re more interested in the logistics of physical certificates.

While Unisa is a distance education institution, and has been long before the pandemic, certain elements of the schooling there was still done in person such as exams and graduation ceremonies.

Both of these have had to change in recent times and it’s the latter issue LenkaBula touches on near the end of the statement.

“…during Coved-19, the university arranged Courier services locally and internationally to deliver certificates to students. Given the scale of the operation, of at least 60 000 + certificates requiring delivery to varied contexts, there have been challenges. To mitigate these risks, the University has changed its model and arranged for the collection of certificates at Unisa regional offices / centres across the provinces. The students are notified via SMS, the Unisa website and / or formal media communication,” LenkaBula writes.

On the about page for Unisa, which was last updated on 20th July 2021, it’s stated that the university currently has 400 000 students. This may make the 60 000-plus number seem even bigger as a percentage, but the statement goes on to clarify that this amount is from several years.

“Over 60 000 certificates were due for delivery to students. These entailed uncollected certificates from 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. A total of 48 071 certificates were due for collection for 2021. To date, 31 000 of the 46 000 certificates have been issued to students. The 2021 supplementary certificates will be distributed later in the year. Unisa commits to expedite the delivery of certificates locally and internationally for all students who have completed their studies and have fulfilled all the requirements for their qualifications,” LenkaBula adds.

For those wondering how a student could possibly miss collection of their certificate, poor communication from Unisa has been a constant problem at the institution. It’s not impossible to imagine that students were simply unaware or misinformed about completed qualifications and their respective physical certificates.

We also have to wonder how payment of tuition factors into this. In conversations with students we have heard of certain university services being kept from them until an outstanding amount has been paid.

Finally, and this is the most grim factor we could imagine, we must remember that at least a portion of students may have passed away before they were able to claim their certificates. At one point the survival rate for COVID-19 in South Africa was 90 percent which may sound high, but that translates to one in 10 people dying after contracting the coronavirus.

“At the beginning of her tenure early in 2021, Professor LenkaBula recognised the issuing of outstanding certificates as a critical area requiring expediting and finalisation. It is through her express intervention that this project is accelerated,” the vice chancellor concludes in the third person.

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