By EPN Reporter
MBABANE – The University of Eswatini (UNESWA) has adjusted the dates on which it would admit the first year students to study at the institution.
The institution has made this announcement after it had announced at the start of this month that it was going to allow Form Fives who finished in 2022 to start their lectures from August 2024. However, the announcement issued today on UNESWA’s online platforms seems to have changes.
UNESWA Registrar Dr Salebona Simelane said the University would like to make the following announcement, with respect to an adjustment to an earlier announcement made, regarding the enrolment of new first year students and the commencement of their classes in 2024:
Dr Simelane said classes for the admitted first-year full-time students, classes for the Institute of Post-Graduate Studies students and part-time classes for the admitted Institute of Distance Education (IDE) students who would pay their tuition and related fees would commence on Monday, April 15, 2024.
On the second change, the registrar said classes for the admitted first-year Mbabane Campus students who would pay their tuition and related fees would commence on Monday, February 12, 2024. The third and last change stated that the second group of students who would not be able to enrol in April, 2024 would enroll in August, 2024.
Dr Simelane regretted any inconvenience caused by the changes. At the time of writing this report, UNESWA’s Facebook on the announcement had attracgted 27 comments. In short, the Facebookers who commented expressed discontentment on the changes and they felt like the students were now classified according to whether they had money or not.
The registrar, according to various local media houses, said last month that they had already admitted the prospective students who had finished in 2022. They were going through application forms of those who had finished last year and they had been looking at possibilities of accommodating all the students they were going to admit.
According to Dr Simelane, the institution always had an intake of first-year students ranging from 2 500 to 3 000 in every academic year. The registrar highlighted that around 2 200 students from the 2022 group had already been admitted to the university and were waiting for the commencement of their lectures in August 2024.
He also indicated that they were expecting the students’ figure for this year to surpass 3 000, or 3 500. It could also reach 4 000, depending on how they utilised their facilities.
