Cape Town - A third-year student at Cape Town University of Technology (CPUT) was left disappointed after finding out that she will not graduate next month.
Yonela Konjwayo said she had already prepared for the occasion on April 26.
Instead, at the start of this month she was informed that she would be excluded from the list of graduates.
“I found out in the first week of March that my marks were captured and submitted late and the deadline was on March 1.
“I then sent emails and the response didn’t give me confidence that I will graduate.
“When I heard that I would graduate in December, that really broke my heart.
“I cried a lot because I had already made plans for the ceremony and had been saving for the day. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to punish me instead of the staff. They submitted late and the marks were captured late, not me.”
She said this will delay her career. “I am busy with my internship now and there is a possibility that I will be employed by the company but I don’t know if they will still be interested when I won’t graduate.
“I have a bit of hope that the university will change their minds and I will get my diploma next month.”
Konjwayo posted her concerns on Facebook and former students shared similar stories.
“There are other people who said this also happened to them last year. The university doesn’t understand the mental torture this brings to someone who is excited about graduating.”
CPUT spokesperson Lauren Kansley said the institution will be graduating well over 7 000 students in their Autumn Graduation series.
“The process of graduating is a very protocol-driven one which is tightly managed by our Assessment and Graduation Centre. This includes having final mark approval done by Senex (the academic governing body that manages academic mark approvals).
“With every graduation ceremony there will inevitably be students who want to graduate since they have completed the necessary course work, however, this is not possible since their marks may still need Senex approval.
“With over 36 000 students at CPUT, we must respect the protocols which govern our mark allocation. It is actually in our own best interests to have students graduate timeously so we would never purposefully hold anyone back from that important milestone.”