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UFS School of Accountancy pass rate trumps SAICA national average

02 April 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Charl Devenish

Accounting Students — Pictured are 8 of the 64 UFS School of Accountancy students who form part of the 84.2% pass rate achievers.

Students from the University of the Free State (UFS) School of Accountancy achieved a 84.2% pass rate compared to the national average of 76.2% during the Initial Test of Competence (ITC) examination facilitated by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA).

A total of 64 out of 76 UFS students who attempted the ITC for the first time were successful in the examination. The ITC is known for its challenging nature. Demographically, our African black students outperformed the 62.1% national pass rate by attaining an impressive 80.6%.

Collective congratulations

Prof Hentie van Wyk, Programme Director at the school, attributed diligence for the high pass rate. “This is due to our student-centred teaching module that was introduced four years ago and committed academic staff of the School of Accountancy from the first to the fourth year.”

Further future surge expected

“With the coming June 2019 ITC sitting, our pass rate for 2019 will most probably be more than 90%. Our three-year rolling average for 2015-2017, 2016-2018 and 2017-2019 were 83%, 86% and 90% respectively. Hopefully we can maintain the upward curve,” said Prof Van Wyk.

News Archive

It is not every day you get to build a heart

2014-09-17

According to the World Health Organisation, heart disease is the leading cause of death world wide. Heart transplantations substantially outperform any other available treatment and extend life by an average of 15 years, but the shortage of donor organs and organ rejection still remain a challenge.

Getting closer to the day where it will be possible to produce human organs by using human cells, researchers at the University of the Free State (UFS) announced that they have successfully decellularized a primate heart.

Decellularization is the process of taking an organ and stripping its cells, leaving behind a framework of binding tissue. The organ can then be repopulated (recellularized) with the patient's own cells - a process considered to move heart research closer to the day when a patient can become his own donor.

This process was discovered in 2008 by American cardiologist, Dr Doris Taylor of the University of Minnesota, who decellularized and recellularized a beating rat heart in a laboratory.

World wide researchers already used the process of decellularization on rat and pig hearts, but the research team of the UFS is the first to use this on a primate heart.

Complete media release.

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