The University of Stellenbosch (SU) is located in the picturesque Jonkershoek Valley in the Western Cape Winelands, where eight of its faculties are on the main campus, and two are inland.

SU is considered an Afrikaans-medium university, particularly at undergraduate and honours level. In 2008, the registration reflected 24 686 students in attendance - 34% of whom were studying at postgraduate level.

The raison d’être of SU is: to create and sustain, in commitment to the academic ideal of excellent scholarly and scientific practice, an environment within which knowledge can be discovered, can be shared, and can be applied to the benefit of the community.

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The University of South Africa (UNISA) is a distance education university with over 200 000 students enrolled country- and world - wide.

Although its main campus is in Pretora, UNISA has Provincial Centres in Florida (in Gauteng), Durban, Cape Town, Polokwane, Nelspruit, Mafikeng, Kimberley, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein. Traditionally, UNISA focussed on adult education, but recently its target market has included people aged 24 and younger.

Women also account for slightly more than 55% of total registrations, while black students (Africans, Coloured, Indians) make up 73%, and owing to its flexibility, just over 1000 disabled learners are currently enrolled.

In terms of its academic offering, UNISA offers a combination of career-orientated courses usually associated with a university of technology, combined with general formative academic programmes typically linked to a traditional university.

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Rhodes University is in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape Province, housing 6000 students – 55% of whom live in residences on campus.

The university specialises in six faculties: Commerce, Education, Humanities, Law, Pharmacy and Science, with over 30 academic departments. Within the student body, 24% are postgraduates and 25% are international students emerging from 57 countries around the world, making Rhodes a cosmopolitan knowledge instiution.

The university is situated in the “Festival City of Grahamstown”, the home of the National Festival of the Arts, SciFest and other festivals, which attract many local and international tourists annually.

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The University of Pretoria (UP) celebrated its centenary in 2008, and ten years previously became the university with the highest research output in South Africa – and has kept that title ever since.

With six campuses and a number of other sites, such as the Pretoria Academic Hospital, UP accomodated more than 57 000 full time and distance learning students in 2008 – the largest residential university in South Africa. From its nine faculties and one business school (The Gordon Institue of Business Science), UP is able to offer more than 1800 academic programmes in two official languages.

According to national information collected in 2006, UP produced 17.8% of all Bachelor’s degrees conferred in the country, 16.6% of all professional bachelor’s degrees, 29.4% of all master’s degress, and 17.3% of all doctoral degrees.

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Newly merged North West University (NWU) is an amalgimation of campuses at Potchefstroom (established in 1869), Mafikeng, Vanderbijpark (est. in 1966) and Mankwe.

With approximately 57 000 full-time and distance-learning students in attendance in 2009, NWU is one of the largest in the country. Although each campus is known for specific faculties and specialities, Potchesfstroom has the largest housing and educational facilities – as well as a claim to the best student life in the country.

After its merger in 2004, the university became part of the biggest multi-campus and multi-diverse institution in the country; spanning two provinces.

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