Pretoria - Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande has admitted that the high volumes of students wishing to apply to register at the University of Johannesburg this week had caught the department by surprise.
"None of us ... would have expected 30 000 students lining outside," he said, adding that many youths were attracted to the university because it was seen as trendy as it is situated in Johannesburg.
On Thursday, UJ announced that it had closed applications for candidates to be admitted to register at the institution for the 2011 academic year.
However, the minister assured that the country's tertiary institutions have enough space to absorb all those matriculants who passed their 2010 matric exams.
He also pointed out that some programmes at UJ were not full. "Whilst the law [faculty] is oversubscribed, the engineering, science and other programmes are not," he said.
The number of learners who have passed and met the minimum requirements for admission to Bachelor Degree studies has increased to 126 371 in 2010 from 109 697 in 2009. A total of 23.5 percent of those who wrote matric in 2010 qualified for BA studies. In 2009, 19.9 percent met the minimum requirements for a BA.
