Professor Tommy du Plessis.
It is September 12 1962 and an enthusiastic crowd is gathered at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The day is a scorcher with attendees using brochures to swat away heat ray after unrelenting heat ray in a futile attempt at relief. Less than an hour later the term “ambition” will have been typified as never before and never again.
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too,” said John F Kennedy, then president of the United States.
Seven years later, on July 21 1969, two astronauts stood 400 000km away on Earth’s only natural satellite. Human beings, through their ambition and with unyielding resolve, built a rocket ship and went to the moon. However, the moon landing wouldn’t have been possible without the thousands of engineers and scientists who made the Apollo 11 mission a success.
Ambition lets you aim for the moon, but you need a craft to get there. Over the last 50 years, the Potchefstroom Business School of the North-West University has specialised in building rocket ships that propel its students to the zenith of their ambitions. It all started in 1964 with the honours in business administration degree, a two-year long precursor to enrolment in an MBA. In 1979 the Post-graduate School in Management was founded and this morphed into the Potchefstroom Business School (PBS) at the turn of the century. Earlier this year, the PBS’s MBA programme was awarded international recognition by the Association of MBAs (Amba).
It is only the fifth business school in South Africa to receive this prestigious stamp of approval and one of 200 globally. Not being situated in one of the country’s main business centres is, evidently, no hindrance for the cream to rise to the top. PBS’s MBA programme was assessed according to 150 criteria and exceeding evaluation requirements more often than not.
Areas of assessment included the institution as a whole, its personnel, programme management and student engagement, its students, the purpose and outcomes of the programme, the curriculum and the programme’s mode and duration. Accreditation by the Amba was given for a period of three years, after which it will be evaluated again.
“We pride ourselves as being able to contribute research of the highest quality and empowering entrepreneurs, would-be businesspeople and those already climbing the corporate ladder with the skills to excel in the business world. We pride ourselves in being a leading business school that sets standards. The Amba’s accreditation of our MBA programme, as well as the endorsement by the Amba’s International Accreditation Advisory Board, is proof thereof,” said Professor Tommy du Plessis, director of the Potchefstroom Business School.
“Students who graduated with an MBA from the PBS have a competitive edge over many of their counterparts, not only locally, but globally as well.
“We may be small in stature compared to some other business schools in the country, and we are younger than most of them, but we can already be spoken of in the same breath as them.
“That says a lot about what we are achieving here and we have no intention to leave it there. We want to keep evolving. We want to give our students the best possible education as not only to survive in the private sector, but to thrive.”
According to Du Plessis, PBS’s mission is to ensure that students get the best value for their money through an integrated strategic thinking approach in all their modules. “Our aim is, and always will be, to deliver research of the highest academic quality and to provide a tangible basis for co-publications between students and the faculty.”
Luminaries who attained their MBAs at the PBS to change the corporate landscape and, in doing so, fulfilled their ambitions, include Duitser Bosman (managing director of Varsity Cup), Lambert van der Nest (chairman of Wildfig Holdings), Melanie Louw (commercial director of Valorem), Kobus van Dyk (chief executive of Samancor) and Wandile Tutani (chairperson of the Independent Communications Authority).
“An MBA remains the most sought after postgraduate degree in the world and is the equivalent of 20 years’ worth of experience. It is without a doubt the best way to fast-track your career while getting the necessary exposure to the best possible expertise,” says Du Plessis. There’s an old adage that goes: “If you aim for the moon but miss, you’ll still be among the stars.” With an MBA, business people seldom miss.
This supplement has been paid for by the North-West University Potchefstroom Campus. Contents and pictures were supplied and signed of by the NWU