Management College of Southern Africa Details

Between 1995 and 2000 MANCOSA provided management programmes in association with the Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (BCUC), a College of the University of Brunel in the United Kingdom. During this 5-year period, MANCOSA successfully delivered tuition support to over 860 students enrolled on the Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College management programmes. At that time, MANCOSA was successfully quality assured by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education of the United Kingdom (QAA).

MANCOSA’s partnership with BCUC in offering management programmes and the MBA provided an international perspective to students in the Southern African region, whilst maintaining a strong local and regional focus. From the year 2000, MANCOSA discontinued offering BCUC qualifications and started to award its own qualifications which were registered and accredited in South Africa.

In delivering its range of management education programmes to a diverse body of students from both the public and private sectors, MANCOSA has considerably developed its infrastructural, academic and intellectual capacities. Drawn from commerce, industry and academia, the programmes have access to a large group of high quality academics, supervisors and mentors in management and leadership.

During October 2014, MANCOSA formally opened its Graduate School of Business [GSB] in Durban. The vision behind establishing the Mancosa [GSB] was the creation of a niche campus focusing exclusively on postgraduate education in business management with emphasis on the promotion of international collaborative higher education; international study tours; executive education and research. In addition to international benchmarking activities, the graduate school of business campus was envisaged to promote programmes relevant to postgraduate business education, hence the creation of the Mancosa [GSB]. The intention is to allow for a differentiated student learning experience between postgraduate and undergraduate education and the Mancosa [GSB] will enable this to happen.  Many postgraduate students hold senior positions in industry and a differentiated learning experience through the Mancosa [GSB] is appropriate.

The following additional factors provide an overview of MANCOSA’s operations:

• During 2014 MANCOSA had over 10 000 enrolled students from 10 South African Development Community (SADC) countries and a number of students from other countries across the globe, studying its programmes;
• There is an existing network of support centres, centrally located, in most provinces of South Africa that are currently being used for sessions with students. Some of these centres are managed through formal partnership agreements with other public and private higher education institutions;
• MANCOSA has qualified full-time and part-time lecturers, supervisors and resource persons to provide educational support;
• These resource persons also provide students with academic support and pastoral care throughout their academic career; and
• The MANCOSA head office, based in central Durban, has a large complement of full-time academic, administrative and student support staff. It also has a well-resourced and modern infrastructure, training facilities, library and ICT infrastructure and equipment to complement its high quality programmes and executive education programmes.

As a leading provider of management programmes through supported distance education, MANCOSA has considerable expertise in the design and development of high quality and relevant study materials. It has developed appropriate teaching and learning strategies, particularly suited for transferring knowledge and skills to mature students, many of whom are in full-time employment. Through its active research focus, MANCOSA remains at the cutting-edge of the latest management and leadership training trends.