Who are we?
We specialize in the management of bursary, scholarship, work experience and internship programmes. We are an independent, owner managed organization based in Johannesburg but with a national footprint. Our client base includes corporate organizations, government entities as well as private trusts and foundations.
Corporate clients
Anglo American Thermal Coal Astron Energy
Avon Peaking Power Black Mountain
Barloworld Automotive Division De Beers
EagleBurgmann EMV Africa
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Johannesburg Water
Kumba Iron Ore Nestlé
Ninety-One (Previously Investec Asset Management)
Petra Diamonds SAEC (South Africa Energy Coal)
PPC South32
Strauss Daly Woolworths
Trusts and Foundations
W K Kellogg Foundation BoE Private Clients
DSV Empowerment Trust Murray & Roberts
The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Thusani Trust (Tiger Brands) Komatsu Development Trust
The Minerals Education Trust Fund
Pioneer Foods Education & Community Trust
The Niall and Julie Anne Hegarty Educational Trust
Government entities
South African Reserve Bank Gibela Rail Financial and Accounting SETA (Fasset)
Mission
Our mission is to provide our clients with a range of expert services in recruitment, development and administration. Our objective is to maximize the graduation and employment rates of all our students.
Ownership and management
Career Wise Empowerment Ventures (Pty) Ltd. is a joint venture between Career Wise and some of its senior and more experienced staff. It is wholly owned by staff who are employed by the business and are directly responsible for the management and operation thereof. The shareholding profile is currently 70% Black and 10% Black Female.
B-B BEE Rating
We currently hold a Level 2 B-BBEE rating. Click to download our B-BBEE certificate.
Staff
Our offices are situated in Milpark, Johannesburg but we have a national footprint and work in all the provinces to recruit new students and visit current bursars. We currently have a staff complement of 21 consisting of 7 professional staff responsible for client accounts and student contact, 4 staff who manage all the finances and the remaining complement consisting of administrative and general support staff.
Bursars
We currently have some 2000 students under our administration at all the public as well as some private tertiary institutions, colleges and schools in South Africa. The students are registered in a range of disciplines with the majority falling into the ‘scarce’ skills disciplines.
Services
We offer our clients the following range of services all of which are aimed at maximizing student graduation and employment rates:-
Core Services
Recruitment of candidates
- Identifying and maintaining relationships with schools/tertiary institutions on a national basis
- A complete online applications platform capable of generating analytics
- Marketing and Advertising of careers/clients
- Screening of applications and holding of preliminary interviews
- Short listing of candidates according to client criteria
- Psychometric testing
- Arrangement of all final interviews
Student liaison and development activities
- Monitoring of academic progress and provision of academic support (Tutoring)
- Collection and interpretation of results
- Student visits at their place of study
- Placement of students for vacation work and practical training
- Liaison with university departments and staff
Administration of awards
- Contracting (drawing up and signing of contracts etc.
- enforcement of contractual obligations
- Personal Records
- Full bursar profiles on database and file records
- Collection of results
- Financial
- budgets, reconciliations, variances
- all payments of fees, allowances etc.
In addition to our core services, we offer consultative services which include (but are not limited to):
- Bursary Policy formulation;
- Developing guidelines for bursary recruitment and administration;
- Training of Bursary administrators;
- Career Guidance;
- Setting up Systems for bursary administration;
Results – National
As is well known, the Higher Education sector in South Africa faces enormous challenges: the two biggest of which are probably the low rates of participation and graduation.
Current figures and statistics for the Higher Education Sector are as follows:-
- More than 1 00 000 students are registered
- The overall participation rate for people in the 20-24 year age group is 16%. This is well below international norms even for developing countries. However, when this is broken down by race, the picture worsens. Whilst participation rates for the White population stands at a very healthy 64%, the rate for Black youth is a dismal 11%.
- The overall graduation or completion rate currently stands at 56% but again there is a very uneven distribution here with the completion rate of Black students only half that of White students.
The reasons for this can be attributed to the inequalities of the past but are also due to the continuing poor results emanating from the secondary school sector. Other factors contributing to the poor participation and success rates include lack of financial support, career guidance and a general lack of support systems. It is well known that poverty levels have deepened in South Africa and the effect of this on families, households and communities exacerbate the situation.
Results – Our students
As stated previously, all our work ranging from recruitment to liaison and administration is aimed at maximizing these participation and graduation rates and whilst it would be expected that students recruited for scholarship and bursary programs are above average in terms of their abilities, the vast majority of our students whilst very able, come from disadvantaged backgrounds and would generally be considered ‘high risk’ students. The
majority of our students are also registered in what is known as the ‘hardcore’ disciplines such as Engineering and Commerce where failure rates are even higher than the average. Within this context we consistently achieve ‘year on year’ pass rates of 80% and overall throughput or graduation rates in excess of 75%.