The University of Pretoria is a multi campus public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 as the Pretoria campus of the Johannesburg-based Transvaal University College and is the fourth South African institution in continuous operation to be awarded university status. The university has grown from the original 32 students in a single late Victorian house to approximately 39,000 in 2010. The University was built on 7 suburban campuses on 1120ha (2767acre).
The University is organised into nine faculties and a business school. Established in 1920, the University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Science is the second oldest veterinary school in Africa and the only veterinary school in South Africa. In 1949 the university launched the first MBA programme outside of North America and the university's Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) has consistently been ranked the top business school in Africa for executive education, as well as being placed in the top 50 in the world. In 2012 the Financial Times ranked the GIBS Executive MBA 1st in Africa and 60th in the world.
Since 1997, the university has produced more research outputs every year than any other institution of higher learning in South Africa, as measured by the Department of Education's accreditation benchmark. In 2008 the university awarded 15.8% of all masters and doctorate degrees in South Africa, the highest percentage in the country.
The university is commonly referred to as UP, Tuks, or Tukkie s and in post-nominals the university is typically abbreviated as Pret or UP, although Pretoria is also used in official publications.
Read more about University Of Pretoria: Sport, Alumni and People
Famous quotes containing the words university of and/or university:
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)
“A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)