To keep students on track during lockdown, the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has made free data packages available for 7 500 of them.
Since lockdown started, the university has been running online courses, but not all students can afford internet access.
UWC rector and vice-chancellor, Professor Vivienne Lawack said: “While not everyone was able to participate in remote learning and teaching immediately, we have been hard at work identifying students with access constraints. In recognition of these student access constraints, the university requested that students complete a questionnaire that indicated data needs.”
Based on the information gathered from the questionnaires, the university made two monthly packages available for the students – 10 gigabytes of daytime data and 20 gigabytes of night-time data.
Professor Lawack said the university had negotiated reasonable rates for the data with network providers, but could only supply the data for three months. The qualifying students would hear in due course how the process would work.
UWC spokesman Gasant Abarder said: “We are busy arranging with the service providers to ensure that the right people are getting the service that they need and that the correct SIM cards are given out to the correct people. We want to ensure that our students have the correct tools to continue their education.”
The UWC website and the Ikamva student learning resources are already under zero-rating status, meaning the data costs for those sites are much lower.
Professor Lawack said: “We are in discussions with mobile providers to come to an agreement on other zero-rating options for core services and websites that may not qualify as direct academic content but are an important part of successful studies such as Gmail, Google Meets, Google Drive and Zoom.”