The miracle of 1994 brought SA a political democracy. Eight years later, a different kind of miracle is taking place - in what was once the heart of Johannesburg's financial sector.
A group of dedicated educationists and highly motivated students are sowing the seeds of an economic democracy, in the eight-storey building that once served as the headquarters of Investec, SA's fifth-largest bank.
The building now houses Community & Individual Development Association (Cida) City Campus, an ambitious greenfields venture in mass tertiary education. It is a not-for-profit company and a fully accredited tertiary institution, registered with the education department.
Cida City Campus was established in its present form by four extraordinary people: Taddy Blecher, former actuary and management consultant; Conrad Mhlongo, former Telkom manager; Richard Peycke, systems analyst, former IT manager of a national construction group and teacher of self-development programmes; and Mburu Gitonga, teacher and educationist.
The higher-education institution is driven by its founders' vision of a stable SA society, with a vibrant economy, buoyed by the economic contribution of graduates of an effective tertiary education system.
Previously the organisation was a nongovernment organisation (NGO), formed by Peycke and others in 1979, called the Community & Individual Development Association.
Cida City Campus opened its doors in its present form in 2000 and is now turning out SA's future leaders at a huge discount to the going rate. Cida is providing high-quality education at 10% of the cost per student at equivalent institutions.
"And, if you factor in the low throughput rates at public institutions, Cida's cost per annum of students could work out as low as 0,5%-1% of SA's average cost per student per annum," says Blecher.
Cost of tuition, registration, books and materials to the students is R350 in the first year. In the second, third and fourth years, they pay R100/month for 11 months of the year. All students have tuition scholarships from the private sector. To pay for accommodation, many work at weekends or during vacations, either on Cida projects or in the private sector - Edgars provides part-time work for 150 students. And many students are sponsored by mentorship programmes (see "Money, Mentoring and maybe a Job"), while others subsist on small amounts scraped together by their friends and family.
Starting with 250 students two years ago, Cida now has more than 1 400 students, in the first, second and third years, of a four-year bachelor of business administration degree. And, despite their experiences in an apartheid education system, Cida students are achieving a stunning average 70% pass rate in their weekly tests.
The Cida City Campus team devised what they call "a human asset strategy for SA" (see "Skills = Jobs = Growth"), . The model is based on multimedia technology. But this hi-tech approach is accompanied by intensive human interaction, strong emotional support for students and immediate remedial measures for any who are in danger of falling behind.
Cida students are in class for almost three times the hours of a student taking a BCom degree at a traditional university. They have a four-year programme as opposed to three years for a bachelor degree. They work seven to nine hours a day, compared with the standard four hours a day, plus a tutorial each week. They work 39-44 weeks a year, compared with the 34-39 weeks worked at other institutions. And they work with a will, as do the staff and the volunteers from some of SA's top professional services firms that play an integral role at Cida (see "Teaching is Teamwork and Students are Team Members"). .
Business leaders know that education is the key to SA's economic success and that lack of appropriate workplace skills will mean ongoing social instability in SA. So Cida has had tremendous support from the private sector. Investec, Cida's first major sponsor, donated its R90m former head office in 2000. The banking group also contributes R3m each year to the building's maintenance.
"Investec is one of our three founding corporate sponsors and has truly put the most on the line and committed incredible resources, time, love, commitment and faith," says Blecher.
Investec is a pivotal founding partner. First National Bank, the Kellogg Foundation, Dimension Data, MTN and KPMG are Platinum partners.
Major contributions, in the form of equipment and time donated, have been made by Dimension Data which has put in more than R5m worth of network infrastructure. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has donated more than R9m worth of their professionals' time, to set up the Cida School of Accounting. T-Systems SA is spearheading the initiative to build a world-class IT specialist training competency and Microsoft SA is providing the software.
International management consulting firm Monitor, along with Gemini Consulting, provides the services of their specialist staff as regular lecturers in their areas of expertise. Assistance has also come from African Bank, which sponsors 400 students a year; Corpcapital, which sponsors 100 students a year; Rand Merchant Bank; Anglo American; and Deutsche Bank. Mondi is providing paper and Amalgamated Appliances is providing the audiovisual equipment.
In addition to company donations, individuals working for these organisations are contributing to the project, paying tuition or accommodation fees for students, or donating their time to mentor students.
Support has come from industry organisations like the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants, the SA Institute of Management, the Institute of Bankers (SA), and the SA Institute of Financial Markets. This wave of support is part of what PwC's Llewellyn Bricknell describes as "a remarkable convergence of forces favourable to Cida." One is that technology allows one lecturer to reach many students and content to be packaged for re-use. But other factors are as important. "The social environment is right. Companies have woken up to the fact that there is more to business than the bottom line," says Bricknell.
Unlike traditional universities, Cida does not charge students large fees. It has a different approach to generating revenue from education.
"Instead of selling education to the poor," says Blecher, "we will sell the finished product in the marketplace. In other words, we will take a placement fee from employers when we place graduates with them. And we will require former students to fund another student (from their home town) from their salary. Or, when students start their own enterprises, we will take a percentage of the profit. This creates the right incentives for the institution to develop a marketable graduate."
What a Cida student learns goes far beyond the campus. Cida has established a community outreach programme (Extranet) which takes students to their home towns during vacations, to teach money management, entrepreneurship and HIV/Aids and health awareness.
A future source of revenue will be data, collected by students working on study projects. In this way, students will provide Cida with a mine of information about the needs, opinions and attitudes of people all over the country (see "Bringing the Message of Change Back Home"), .
Another potential source of revenue is Cida Enterprises, an incubator of small businesses with promise (see "Incubator for Small Business"), .
"The secret of Cida's success is the careful selection of young people who already show potential and who appreciate the opportunity they have been given," says Cida staffer Leigh Meinert.
Cida City Campus is a pilot project that can be replicated. Blecher, who was selected as one of 100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, says that when Cida has 7 000 students in Johannesburg, it plans to open up in other centres.
