Don't waste your time & Money with this place

The university administration is an absolute joke.

I app**** in October 2020 to do an online version of a course I had not completed in 2019. I was accepted into the course after various phone calls with various administrators in an effort to get someone to call me back or reply to an email.

I had also been upfront that I had credits from 2019 that I would like added to the record. I was told that would be done post-haste without any issues. I was told to email the request to the admisitrator, which I did, the administrator then confirmed receipt and advised they would forward the request on to the relevant people and I would be awarded the credits.

When I logged on later that year to register/enroll to modules in the course, I realized that the only modules available to me in that study block were modules I already had credit for. I began the phone call exercise yet again, and was advised by administrators that I need not worry, I would only register in January 2021, to do the modules offered in that block (which I would probably not have credits for).

January 6 2021, I call the university to ask what the process for me enrolling is because my online portal still showed no modules. I was then told that: because I had not registered in 2020, I was now no longer part of that intake and would have to apply from the start again to be taken in with the March intake. I relayed my story to the administrator about the credits and I was told that if the credits were allocated as should have been then this shouldn't be a problem. It turns out that the credits were never allocated to me, thus the current predicament.

I have called and spoken to numerous administrators and faculty members regarding my situation, and eventually I was promised that the academic committee would let me know if I could start with the January class that started Monday 11 January 2021. I received absolutely no communication from Wits on Friday 8 Jan, and had to call and hold for 30min on Monday to get through to someone. Eventually once I was able to talk to someone, I was told the faculty/academic committee was still considering and would communicate to my by Tuesday 12th of the result. There was no communication forthcoming from the University, so again I began the calling exercise. The consultant said to me: I must apply for March intake, because they are not able to process the credits in time for my registration/enrollment due to the fact that other employees are only back to the university from the 18th January 2021.

So I should wait till March, because I was given poor advice by the University itself, an administrator somewhere dropped the ball and did not allocate the credits as was needed for 4 months in 2020 and they're short of staff 4months later and cannot do as they promised they would. This all even though all the relevant people in faculty are at work, they could not be bothered to see their mistakes and correct them.

Unfortunately, this is not my first bad experience with this institution. My father and sister have had similar experiences over the past 2 years at Wits Business School and Medical School, and with a quick google of complaints we are not unique in this situation. Wits Business school claims (quite loudly too) that they are the best in South Africa, yet they can't even run their business competently, they teach ethics and preach a higher morality in their lectures but fail to uphold their own values.

In 2019, whilst I was doing contact classes at Wits Business School, they tried to increase the price of the modules, after most students had paid the full years fees. Their reasoning: We forgot to make the annual adjustment to the fees at the end of 2018. So a business school that can't even get their pricing structures correct in time, yet wants to teach people how to run their business schools?

What is more worrisome is that overseas universities are more responsive to the queries of potential students, and more understanding of the circumstances that students may face. More so than the so called ''leading University" in my own back yard. My advice is; Save your money & time, rather apply to a 'real' institution and forget about this over-priced hype-job, they are not the world class institution they claim to be. Unisa, Gibbs, UCT & Stellenbosch are all better bets.