The 2025 academic year is upon us, so we lean on the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson as we invite all staff and students ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’. That is the posture and the philosophy that keeps TUT moving from good to great.
Prof Tinyiko Maluleke, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Tshwane University of Technology.
While students elsewhere may be content to glory in the past and happy to merely comply with the fleeting fads of the present, TUT students strive for future-readiness. Other academics may engage in research that serves the narrow interests of an elite minority; but at TUT we seek knowledge and produce research that impacts the majority.
The Tshwane University of Technology is like a bridge over the troubled waters that flow between the academic world and the world of work. Upon this bridge, the world of academia meets the world of work.
Most TUT departments have advisory councils - consisting of academics and industry captains – whose function is to create linkages between the university and its industry partners. At TUT, students receive part of their training in industry, as Work-Integrated-Learning (WIL) ‘interns’. This way, we help our students to progress purposefully from first year to first job. The ability to shape the future of work is a crosscutting attribute of TUT graduates. So is the need to be fluent in artificial intelligence and its huge impact on the future of work.
TUT students are required to use their knowledge to fight the scourge of Gender-Based Violence and to promote Environmental Sustainability. We therefore insist that all staff and students must take an active part in our noble institutional effort against GBV and the promotion of environmental sustainability and cyber security.
At TUT we boast one of the most dedicated, hardworking and innovative staff members in the sector. Any wonder that TUT has been rising higher and higher in international university rankings?
By design, TUT attracts and signs up students who are hardworking, resilient and hungry for knowledge. Indeed, if our students were not resilient and determined, they would not defy the kinds of odds they do in order to end up at TUT.
The road from good to great is not smooth and easy. It requires diligence and determination. TUT students are the type not to yield when faced with challenges.
On behalf of the Council, Executive Management and the office of the TUT Chancellor, I welcome staff and students to the 2025 academic year. I invite you all to the discipline of striving, seeking, finding and never yielding. Therein lies the secret of TUT’s relentless march from good to great.
Vice-Chancellor and Principal
Prof Tinyiko Maluleke