Cooperation with Göttingen University delivers first Master's degrees

The first two students in the new double degree Masters programme in Economics between the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Göttingen in Germany received their degrees at the graduation ceremony on 10 December. Students in the programme spend a year in Stellenbosch doing coursework and another year in Göttingen doing coursework, and also write a mini-dissertation that is jointly supervised between the two universities. At the end of this they receive a MA degree in Development Economics from the University of Göttingen and an MCom degree in Economics from the University of Stellenbosch. They have to meet the compulsory course requirements from both universities, and in addition can select from a large number of electives in Economics, especially Development Economics.

The first graduates are Poppie Ntaka and Kate Rich, both from Stellenbosch. They will soon be followed by Göttingen students who only have to submit their theses, while more students from both universities are in the double degree pipeline. This cooperation with Göttingen builds on a long relationship between the two departments that has included student and staff visits and currently also a large international research project that in addition involve universities from the Netherlands and India.