The world is fast changing.
The pace of change does not only manifest in the realm of politics but equally in the economic and technological realms. Over the past few years the globe has experienced seismic changes that require considered responses by the academic sector and specifically by the business school sector including but not limited to the following:
- At the political realm, there is greater polarity in multilateral realignment leading to among others, the establishment of BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation and IBSA while at the same time, historic multilateral institutions like the IMF and Security Council are either reforming or called upon to expedite reforms;
- The world has in recent times experienced turbulent economic cycles that include the great recession (2007-2009) triggered by the US housing bubble that erased $19.2 trillion in Americans’ net worth; in 2016 Britain exited Europe (BRIXIT) negatively affecting both Europe and British economies to date; in 2017 China became the biggest economy followed by the USA by purchasing power parity (PPP) according to the World Bank with its PPP-based gross domestic product (GDP) at US$19.617 trillion, while the USAs’ equivalent was US$19.519 trillion and COVID-19 (2020) devastated the global economic GDP by no less than 2,7% sending gold prices to an all-time high of $2,072/oz by 7 August 2020;
- Advancements in technologies reached new heights in 2019 with fifth generation (5G) telecommunication technologies and in the sphere of artificial intelligence (AI) developments – Chat GPT and specifically GPT-4 and beyond has sparked a scare that AI technology may surpass human intelligence resulting in a global wide petition to halt machine learning developments and experimentation.
Just as the business school fraternity became prominent in the 17th century after much of the industrial revolution, all the developments cited here above are catalytic in the evolution of education and business school education in particular. These new challenges prompt a matching response.
With this said, I would like to welcome you all to South Africa’s newest public school, the Durban University of Technology (DUT) Business School, founded in 2020 and operational for the first time in August 2021 with its first MBA cohort. I am honored and pleased that the DUT has found it fitting for me to take the responsibility of establishing this business school.
At governance level, the school is led by an esteemed advisory board comprising of executives from a broad range of industries from around the world chaired by Prof Himanshu Rai the Dean of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore.
Since its establishment in 2020, the DUT Business School does not only run the MBA (NQF9) flagship but has added two formal programmes to its ambit – a Postgraduate Diploma (NQF8) and Advance Diploma (NQF7) in Management Sciences as well as Certificate Programmes (NQF5).
The School is in the process to establish its own state of the art premises. Currently, the School faculty comprises a team of international scholars, a diversity of corporate experiences, from countries far and near including but not limited to Canada, Germany, Ghana, Uganda and South Africa.
I am confident that the DUT Business School shall immerse its graduates in international and local corporate cultures and practices using the most context relevant case studies. I call upon the corporate, public and third sectors to join hands with the DUT Business School so that we can cooperatively reimagine a double-digit economy, sustain current industries and spawn millions with a view to impact positively the South African human development index.
Prof Fulufhelo Netswera
Executive Dean of the Faculty of Management Sciences