On April 03, 2021 an article entitled “Debt drives students to despair”, appeared in the Mail and Guardian (M&G) newspaper. The article makes several references to the Central University of Technology (CUT), as one of the country’s universities with the highest student debt.

The article states that an amount of R1,78 billion is still owed to CUT by 12 985 students. CUT wishes to rectify this by stating that in 2020, the CUT Council approved that ‘old’ outstanding debt of students who were registered for the last time in 2015 and before then, to the value of R125 million, be written off. Thus, from the total number of students that graduated between 2016 and 2019, 6 615 still have outstanding debt to a total amount of R242 million. The total outstanding student debt (for students with debit balances) at the end of the 2020 Financial year was R1,3 billion.

The article also makes mention of a former CUT student, Tefelo Mabuya, who studied Hospitality Management at CUT and graduated in 2018. He owes the university R70 000 and has purportedly been unable to access job opportunities given that he has not received his graduation certificate from the institution. The university wants to put this matter on record that our graduates do receive their academic records once they have completed their studies, and that CUT has a standing arrangement to send copies of their certificates to their prospective employers.

For media related queries contact Mr Dan Maritz, Tel: 051 507 3820, E-mail: dmaritz@cut.ac.za; Cell phone: 072 588 8282. Or Ms Seithati Semenokane, E-mail ssemenokane@cut.ac.za; Cell phone: 073 427 0114.