Banking group Absa will sponsor Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare to receive Gartner research for the use of their students and academic staff.

No details of the value of the sponsorship were released, but Gartner Africa's Gail Hurry says the minimum cost for a small university or learning institution would be around $7 500 per year, compared with a single-user licence for a small business at $11 000.

“We have a range of lower-cost products available for higher learning institutions. These depend on the number of students registered on a full-time basis with the institution,” she says.

The Absa sponsorship will last for a year and then possibly be renewed, Hurry says.

In terms of the sponsorship, the information is available to all registered students at the respective universities and is not used exclusively by the IT students. The University of Fort Hare has links to the Gartner resources via the library Web page to which all students have access.

John McNeill, a senior lecturer in Rhodes University's department of information systems, says the benefit of using Gartner research is that it's current and the content remains fresh.

“Although this makes it especially relevant to information systems students, the information is beneficial to the commerce faculty as a whole,” he says.
The sponsorship provides the university students and lecturers with access to critical information they would not otherwise have had.

Absa became aware of the need for IT research to be made available to the students and lecturers through its representation on the information systems advisory board of both universities.

The advisory boards comprise high-level CIOs from blue-chip companies. Their main responsibility is to advise the universities on curriculum content, based on current industry requirements.

Rhodes University was the first South African higher education institution to be linked to the Internet during the late 1980s.

“We were already offering advice through the advisory board, but wanted to make our support more tangible,” says Dirk le Roux, GM of IT strategy and risk management at Absa. “At Absa, we've used Gartner's research for quite some time and were confident the universities would get value out of using it as well.”

He describes his bank's involvement with the universities as symbiotic as Absa receives feedback on student projects and help with its own research challenges.

“Without Absa's sponsorship we would not be able to afford to offer the research to our students and lecturers,” says Danie Vlok, acting head of the information systems department at the University of Fort Hare. “The information is used mainly by honours and masters students as well as by lecturers for lecture preparation.”