University of Mauritius

TERTIARY EDUCATION in Mauritius can be said to have started with the establishment of the island’s College of Agriculture in 1924. It was around this nucleus that the University of Mauritius was constructed. The university opened in 1965 with three schools: Agriculture, Administration, and Industrial Technology. Since the 1960s it has expanded to comprise five faculties: Agriculture, Engineering, Law and Management, Science, and Social Studies and Humanities. It also has a Centre for Medical Research and Studies, a Centre for Distance Education, a Centre for Information Technology and Systems, and a Consultancy Centre where the university’s expertise can be matched to client needs in the general economy. The university has grown at about 10 percent per annum over the past decade. Today, with 256 academic and research staff, the University of Mauritius dominates the tertiary education sector on the island. Its vision is ‘to be a leading international university, bridging knowledge across continents through excellence and intellectual creativity’.

Student fees account for 27 percent of the university’s income, while a further 69 percent comes from government. The remaining four percent is earned through consultancy work and other income.

This is where the Consultancy Centre comes in. Its purpose is to maximise the revenue-earning potential of the university’s expertise in research and training, and to consolidate existing links with local partners in the public and private sectors, as well as foreign partners, and to seek out new potentialities. The Consultancy Centre plays an important regional role by providing services to various African countries – for example in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and also Mauritius – thus fulfilling the
institution’s secondary role of using teaching and research expertise as tools for sustainable development in the SADC region.