Latest News Archive
Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
29 March 2022
|
Story Teli Mothabeng
|
Photo Supplied
![]()
Philmon Bitso, Student Recruitment Officer, with the top-10 cohort of the class of 2021 Free State Star of Stars.
The Department of Student Recruitment Services at the University of the Free State (UFS) hosted its annual Free State Star of Stars competition at the Amanzi Private Game Reserve during the first week of March. The event saw some of the brightest young minds in the Free State inducted as UFS first-year students into this year’s top-10 cohort for the competition. This marks the first Star of Stars event since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
.jpg?Status=Master&sfvrsn=d7324e20_1)
This new cohort consists of a dynamic group of academically gifted students from Quintile 1-3 schools in the Free State who are currently enrolled for different UFS academic programmes, ranging from Medicine, Law, Education, and various Bachelor of Science courses. Many of these students had to overcome insurmountable challenges to perform as well as they did in their Grade 12 academic year and to become part of the top-10 cohort for the class of 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Student Recruitment Services was forced to take a different approach to celebrate these deserving students; consequently, a weekend-long induction camp was the substitute for the annual gala dinner.
Apply for the 2022 Free State Star of Stars competition
The UFS realised the need to establish a platform that recognises and celebrates the diverse and, in most instances, difficult circumstances that disadvantaged schools (Quintile 1-3) are facing. Consequently, the Star of Stars competition was developed and established in 2016. This competition provides disadvantaged Grade 12 learners from all districts in the Free State an opportunity to showcase their excellence, while motivating them to aspire to achieve more.
Academic addresses financial planning leaders at world summit
2010-05-04
 |
| Adv. Wessel Oosthuizen, Director of the Centre for Financial Planning Law at the University of the Free State (UFS), addressing financial leaders at the World Financial Planning Summit. |
Adv. Wessel Oosthuizen, Director of the Centre for Financial Planning Law at the University of the Free State (UFS), is chair to four Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB) expert panels that guide the global Certified Financial Planning (CFP) certification programme. At the recent World Financial Planning Summit, held in Taipei in China, he challenged a group of global financial planning leaders to support the formation of a global financial planning body of knowledge with sustainable career-path development opportunities.
He said: “For financial planning to be recognised as a distinct professional practice and a global profession, the financial planning community must establish a universal body of knowledge that is supported by applicable in-depth research.
“We need to establish how professional bodies should collaborate with academia to integrate a more competency-based education and training environment that combines theory with practice. Fostering and promoting comprehensive research in financial planning topics is another key challenge that must be addressed in order to develop a tertiary knowledge framework for the financial planning profession.”
Adv. Oosthuizen, who is playing a big role in providing consistent and rigorous education and assessment tools for financial planning in 2010, said that a bachelor’s degree should be a compulsory minimum requirement for practising financial planners.
About the learning curve between the academic and work environments in the financial planning profession, Adv. Oosthuizen said: “Implementing a career-path model that supports a more structured approach to apprenticeships and supervised practice would complement a specialised financial planning body of knowledge and provide entrants to the profession with the necessary theoretical knowledge and practical experience to offer competent and ethical financial planning.”
The World Financial Planning Summit engaged global leaders of more than 17 financial planning standards-setting bodies, as well as regulators, financial planning educators and other invited guests in a dialogue about the steps needed to gain recognition for financial planning as a distinct, global profession.