The University of the Witwatersrand has been endowed with US$1 million (about R12 million) towards the establishment of a new professorship in development economics.
The donation was made by San Francisco-couple‚ Derek Schrier and Cecily Cameron‚ through their US-based charitable foundation‚ Wits said in its weekly newsletter.
Held in the Faculty of Commerce‚ Law and Management and headed up by Professor Vishnu Padayachee‚ Distinguished Scholar at Wits‚ the university said the Derek Schrier and Cecily Cameron Chair in Development Economics aims to foster research into issues such as South Africa’s transition in relation to sustainable development and democracy‚ macro-economic policy‚ and corporate transformation.
Wits said Schrier‚ chief investment officer of Indaba Capital Management‚ has had close ties with South Africa for more than 20 years. After graduating from Princeton University in 1989‚ he left Goldman‚ Sachs & Co. in 1992 to work with the non-profit CASE‚ led by Wits Professor Mark Orkin‚ in managing election polls for the African National Congress’s political campaign during South Africa’s first non-racial elections‚ until 1994.
“My time in South Africa impacted me in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I made the decision‚ at the age of 25‚ to come here‚” Schrier was quoted as saying in the Wits newsletter. “The experience helped shape who I am today; I am better off for it‚ and owe South Africa a debt of gratitude.”
“Supporting a Chair in Development Economics is a pragmatic investment in the development of South Africa and the African continent‚” Schrier said.
Cameron is a former consultant with McKinsey & Co. The pair met during their postgraduate studies at Stanford University.
The endowment comes as South African universities failed to make the top 10 in the latest rankings of universities in Brics countries‚ hampered by large class sizes and too few lecturers.
QS said in a statement: “Managers of these universities argue that their faculty-student ratio is essentially set by the government‚ which presses them to admit more students but does not fund them well enough to hire more staff. These tricky educational economics mean‚ too‚ that South Africa’s academics are not well-paid by world standards and as a result many do not have a PhD.”
China came out tops of the survey by QS‚ claiming seven of the top 10 places‚ with India‚ Brazil and Russia each winning one.
RDM News Wire.
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