Student registrations at UNISA: Some important observations

Abstract

The University of South Africa (Unisa) offers degrees, diplomas and certi- ficates via distance education fromundergraduate to doctoral level.Tough local and foreign competition in themarketplace, more segmented target audiences as well as escalating marketing costs necessarily create a need to develop andmanage a skilfulmarketing strategy and plan to ensure sur- vival. In order to contribute to effective publicity and marketing for the Department of Public Administration and Management at Unisa, the nat- ure of the students'profile, demography and student registrations during the 2002 and 2003 academic years were analysed in order to come up with amore efficientmarketing strategy and to improve the department's professional assistance when recruiting new students during the various registration periods. The research identified specific trends in the regis- tration patterns of first-year, second-year, third-year as well as honours- level students during the 2002 2003 academic years within the depart- ment. For comparative purposes four other selected first-year modules' registration patternswere included in the analysis. Some possible reasons for the identified registration tendencies and trends were made and the author came up with some logical conclusions and realistic recommenda- tions on how to improve the department `s as well as Unisa's marketing campaigns in future.