Educational Excellence

Maintaining excellence in education

We are one of the few private universities in South Africa to design and develop its own degrees.  All the degrees at St Augustine are approved and accredited by the Council for Higher Education, the South African Qualifications Authority, and registered with the Department of Education as those of a Private Higher Education Institution. We do not teach degrees developed by other universities, but rather our own degree programmes. These are tailor-made to address the current needs of students in South Africa who are looking for a high quality education that will enable them to realise their full potential and become active members in, and leaders of, the professional work place.

We offer a full range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees which, at the undergraduate level, include a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Bachelor of Commerce (PPE) degree and a Bachelor of Theology degree.  To maintain a high academic standard comparable with universities like the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Cape Town and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, lecturers and professors from these universities are asked to externally moderate all our exams from first year to third year.  Through this process, we are able to ensure that the content and quality of our degrees remains on a par with these universities.

The importance of private colleges and universities

In South Africa, only 10% of South African students get their degrees from private institutions and almost 50% of  students get a degree from UNISA.  This indicates two things: the need for more face-to-face institutions of higher education; and that private independent tertiary education is relatively new in South Africa.  At St Augustine, we take the importance of education in South Africa very seriously and our degrees are all designed to address the pressing need for high quality tertiary education in South Africa.  Our teaching and learning approach is designed to address many of the deficiencies of the school systems and we aim to ensure that at least 90% of our students pass all their subjects.  As a private higher education institution, we are able to offer smaller classes, state of the art lecture rooms and more personalized tuition, all of which enable you to master your chosen subjects.  

Being of the same genre, we work within the tradition of private colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, Amherst and Notre Dame in America. Like our American counterparts, we offer specialized education to smaller groups of students to ensure that the quality of the classroom experience and the unique excellence of our teaching is not lost.

Our Vision and Mission Statement

We aim to position ourselves at the interface of the diverse realities: of culture and religion, philosophy and politics, business and ethics, science and society.

We aim to engage with these diverse realities in a way that takes all sides seriously and shows their relevance to Southern Africa.

We aim to make a distinctive contribution to education in Africa by drawing on the Catholic intellectual tradition - whilst engaging dialectically secular models of higher education.

We aim to focus on the comprehensive human good that gives a central place to the dignity and transcendence of the human person.

We aim to make a distinctive contribution to the field of higher education by linking career competence and technical expertise with social and moral responsibility.

We aim to give a serious and central role to the core integrative disciplines of philosophy and theology that foster interdisciplinary exchange.

We aim to ensure that there is an integration between specialization and generalization in the learning at the College so that students can discern something of the truth that runs through all things.

We aim to challenge the disciplinary framework of the modern university where rigid distinctions between fact and value are made.

We aim to challenge the tendency that rigidly separates the public and private realms, relegating serious moral issues to the academic side-lines.

We aim to foster critical examination of standards of rationality and inquiry that are operative in the public realm as we believe that interdisciplinary, integrative and evaluational thinking is proper to the university.