Page 49 - CAO 25th Ann Coffee Table Book

At the time, the idea, let alone the actual implementation of an organisation that would offer a single point of contact for aspiring students in KZN and South Africa from the 2000 intake was novel, to say the least. Prior to 1999, students wanting to pursue their post-school studies in KZN had to contact every institution, request forms, pay separate fees, fill in different forms and solicit feedback from multiple institutions. The academic institutions needed their own staff to manage the requests, and mail houses to prepare the information packs and provide correspondence. These processes wasted valuable resources that could have been used in education rather than administration.
The very first list of 144 programmes appeared as a single A4 page folded into an A5 four-page duplicated listing of programmes for the 1999 second semester entry to (number of programmes are given in brackets): M L Sultan Technikon (24); Mangosuthu Technikon (12); Technikon Natal, Berea Campus (7); and Technikon Southern Africa, TSA (101).
The first 117-page professionally designed Handbook was published during July 1999 for entry into the 2000 academic year. It contained programmes for over 600 programmes offered at: Mangosuthu Technikon; M L Sultan Technikon; Technikon Natal; Technikon Southern Africa; University of Durban-Westville; University of Natal; University of South Africa; and University of Zululand.
The application fee was R85 for applications received before 31 October, R170 for applications received thereafter, and $US40 for international applicants before 31 October, $US80 thereafter.
Applicants were also directed to the CAO website.
During the first year of operation, the CAO experienced huge challenges and institutions were generally unsympathetic to these. One of the leading universities went as far as to threaten termination of the agreement with the CAO by 30 June 2000. It was pointed out that the original cause of many of the difficulties experienced by the CAO could be traced back to the shortage of funds, which did not allow for the decision to run a parallel system during the first year of operation. The demands of providing a service during the development phase also created enormous problems, the consequences being an undermining of confidence in the system. In addition, the staff in the institutions had little chance to learn the new system.
Operations for the 2001 cycle showed a great improvement on the previous year and institutions made greater use of the system, capturing was kept up to date and the influx of applications into the offices was handled smoothly. Except for a system glitch in January 2001 that delayed the Matric Matching for several
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