The academic excellence of a W&R Seta bursary recipient has seen her jetting off to Germany to study for three months as part of CPUT’s international student exchange programme.
Third-year Retail Business Management student, Mihle Tyala, says knowing she will not have to repay the money spent on her studies pushed her to work harder and get good grades in order to keep the bursary.
“One of the things that I think made me one of the students chosen for the exchange programme is that my academic record spoke for me before I could actually represent myself. The motivation to study and work hard comes from knowing that I am funded and I will get my qualification without a debt from the institution,” says the tenacious 20-year-old.
Mihle is one of three students in the department who were selected into the programme after rigorous interviews. The other two are Siviwe Majali and Jamie Kaylor. They left for Germany on 27 September and will be back in the country on 20 December 2018.
They are studying International Retail in Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Ravensburg (Ravensberg University of Cooperative Education) in Ravensburg, Germany.
“I was nervous at first because I didn’t know what to expect but now that I am here am enjoying myself – the experience of living with students from different countries and learning their way of doing things which is completely different from my own traditional way,” says Mihle.
“Also the different learning environment and the more knowledge that am gaining about retail is quite a great experience and it’s something that I will always be grateful for.”
The reason she is ecstatic is that Mihle did not always have a bursary. When she enrolled at CPUT as a first year student in 2016 she obtained an NSFAS loan but in 2017 and 2018 she was lucky enough to get a Wholesale & Retail SETA bursary to finance her studies as her police officer father, the family breadwinner, could not afford to pay.
She intends to do her BTech next year and dreams of working in the planning department of a retail company.
Mihle is excited about acquiring more knowledge about the retail world which she enjoys. “I got an opportunity to work at Woolworth for three months. I was in the planning department where we planned what goes to stores and how many products each.”
