Avoid This Institution — An Embarrassing Level of Incompetence

Avoid This Institution — An Embarrassing Level of Incompetence

I would strongly advise prospective students to think twice before enrolling with Rosebank International. My experience has been nothing short of extremely frustrating, and the level of incompetence and unprofessionalism I have encountered is unacceptable for a private educational institution.

And before anyone dismisses this as one disgruntled student's opinion — it absolutely is not just me. A significant majority of my peers in my field of study, in my experience, are complaining about the exact same issues: lecturers who do not respond, academic queries that are ignored, WhatsApp messages that are read and left unanswered, and an administration department that seems completely incapable of providing clear and consistent assistance.

The lecturers are seemingly incapable of basic communication. Emails go unanswered, academic queries are ignored, and WhatsApp messages are routinely read without receiving any response whatsoever. You can send a legitimate academic query and quite literally be left talking to yourself. Apparently, responding to a paying student's academic query is considered optional.

The administration is no better. The department appears completely disorganised, with students being passed around or left without proper answers. Simple queries become unnecessarily complicated, and students are repeatedly forced to follow up for information and assistance that should have been provided in the first place.

What makes this particularly insulting is the cost. You are paying private tuition fees and, in return, receive a level of service that feels like a correspondence institution where you are expected to fend for yourself. If I wanted to pay substantial fees for unanswered emails, ignored messages and poor administration, I could have saved myself the money and studied through UNISA.

Then there are the glowing reviews.

If such a large proportion of the students I interact with are experiencing the same problems, someone needs to explain how the overwhelmingly positive reviews are supposed to make sense.

Based on my own experience and the experiences being discussed among my peers, I find some of those reviews extremely difficult to reconcile with the reality students are experiencing. I cannot personally prove that any particular review is paid, incentivised or internally generated, so I will not present that as a fact. However, when the student experience I am seeing is so consistently negative, the contrast certainly raises questions about how representative those glowing reviews actually are.

A private educational institution should provide responsive lecturers, competent administration and proper academic support. That should not be an unreasonable expectation when students are paying private tuition fees.

In my experience, Rosebank International falls woefully short of that standard.

Prospective students: do your homework before enrolling. Speak to actual students in your programme, not just representatives of the institution. Look beyond the marketing and the five-star reviews and find out what the day-to-day student experience is really like.

Because from where I am standing, you are paying private-institution prices for what feels like UNISA-level service — except without the benefit of knowing that you chose distance learning in the first place.